The NFL is back — belatedly, and who knows for how long.
The league yesterday finally got around to complying with a federal judge’s order to lift the lockout, announcing that all team facilities will reopen this morning while indicating free agency and the trading of players will resume Monday.
But the announcement by the owners came grudgingly and not without more risk on their part of incurring the wrath of U.S. District Judge Susan Nelson, after she twice ruled in favor of the players in their antitrust battle against the league.
The owners unsuccessfully sought a freeze from Nelson of her injunction Monday lifting the lockout, and are now going over her head and seeking the same thing from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.
That decision from the appeals court could come as soon as today (although early next week is more likely), and the lockout would be reinstated immediately if the court sides with the owners and stays the injunction.
“We’ve given instructions to open up the doors [this] morning to allow players to come in, meet with coaches, start some of that preparation workout, use the facilities,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last night at the Draft. “And then we’re also working on the plan for player transactions. But we’re also waiting for judgments from another court — the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals — and we’ll have to take those decisions into account also.”
Legal experts tell The Post there is far from any guarantee the league will get that stay from the appeals court, and indeed, the owners’ entire legal strategy appears to be blowing up in their faces with each withering decision.
But if the owners are reconsidering that strategy, there appeared to be no public sign of second thoughts.
Goodell told the media, just hours before the start of the draft, that he fears litigation with the players could drag on, endangering the regular season if the court decisions somehow start turning in the owners’ favor.
“I think the litigation unfortunately can go on for some period of time,” Goodell said. “It’s usually not the fastest. It’s usually not the most direct route, and it’s one of the reasons it doesn’t really solve differences at the end of the day.”
Meanwhile, the individual clubs remained in a state of confusion after the NFL’s announcement yesterday, unsure of specifically when free agency or transactions would start and how it might impact the NFL Draft, which started last night and continues today and tomorrow.
Despite Nelson’s insistence that the lockout be lifted immediately, the league yesterday claimed — dubiously, according to legal experts — that free agency and trading players is too complicated to restart immediately.
As a result, teams cannot trade players, only picks, during the three-day draft.
Everything else is back to business as usual: offseason workouts, medical treatment, drug rehab, organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamps. Teams also are allowed to interact with their players and distribute playbooks.
The players and their decertified union, buoyed by yet another legal victory over the owners in what is turning into a courtroom rout, were jubilant in the wake of the NFL’s announcement.
“It’s a great day for our country, because football’s back,” DeMaurice Smith, chief of the decertified NFL Players Association, said at a pre-draft event yesterday afternoon.
bhubbuch@nypost.com