Negotiations are a process, not a race. And the overreactions to every little bit of news in these negotiations annoy me, as does all the flip-flopping. A resolution has been close for weeks now, but it isn't there yet. Meanwhile, we get reports every day how the negotiations almost blow up because someone sneezed in the soup. Surprise: negotiations go through ups and downs.

When one side makes concessions, the other side is going to try to get more - and that may lead someone to go 'talks are breaking down', while that is simply a part of the process. The revenue split is all but done, so now they're stuck on the small stuff - most notably the rookie wage scale. Each side is going to try to get as much as they can on each subject, so they can get stuck on issues like that for a long time. This doesn't mean talks are nearly breaking down every other day, it just means that each side is doing its job as a negotiating team.

Because both sides going to work hard to get as much as they can, these negotiations can be 'close' for a very long time. I don't care whether negotiations are actually close, because the term is now meaningless. Wake me up when the negotiations get done - because that's the only relevant term left.