NFL

NFL players union dissolved; lockout imposed

WASHINGTON — The players had the owners on the run, but picked the nuclear option instead.

Seeking a decisive blow against the backpedaling owners instead of agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement, the NFL Players Association shifted the labor war to the courts yesterday by decertifying and then having 10 players — including the Giants’ Osi Umenyiora — file an antitrust lawsuit against the league.

The owners, who angrily accused union chief DeMaurice Smith of negotiating in bad faith, then imposed a lockout last night at 11:59 p.m. and set off the sport’s first work stoppage since 1987.

But the lockout could be short-lived.

Decertification by the union was a pre-emptive move that allowed the players to file a 52-page lawsuit and request a temporary restraining order in what they consider the extremely friendly court of federal judge David Doty.

An injunction, which legal experts say is likely, would lift the lockout and allow football to be played while the sides duke it out over the legality of the college draft and franchise-player designations, among other provisions.

The injunction request was randomly assigned yesterday to a different Minneapolis-based judge. Both that and the antitrust suit are expected to end up with Doty because of his long experience with NFL cases. Doty, who repeatedly has ruled in the players’ favor since the early 1990s, would then decide on the restraining order in 2-4 weeks.

The lockout will stand in the meantime, though, meaning all league business except the NFL draft is expected to grind to a halt until the injunction request is decided. The legality of the draft is part of the players’ antitrust suit, with Texas A&M linebacker prospect Von Miller serving as the named plaintiff, but the suit won’t be heard until long after next month’s selection show.

Yesterday’s late-afternoon flurry of events followed a day of dramatic twists and turns in the negotiations, which had been set in motion three years ago when the owners opted out of the CBA because they claimed it was overly generous to the players.

Realizing their odds would be poor in an antitrust suit overseen by Doty, the owners improved their offer dramatically yesterday afternoon and howled when the union walked away, citing the owners’ refusal to turn over team-by-team financial information.

“One thing that became painfully apparent to me during [the past two weeks] was that [the NFLPA’s] objective was to go the litigation route,” said Giants co-owner John Mara, who sat in on all 16 days of the talks here with federal mediator George Cohen.

“I believe they think [litigation] gives them the best leverage. I never really got the feeling in the past weeks that they were serious about negotiating. And it’s unfortunate, because that’s not what collective bargaining is all about.”

Much of the action earlier in the day came from the owners, who were increasingly panicked about the prospect of an antitrust suit in Doty’s court that could result in the amount of a multi-million-dollar damage award being tripled.

So what had long been the owners’ demand for an extra $1 billion per year in revenue-sharing rollbacks from the union had been whittled to $640 million annually by yesterday morning.

As it became increasingly obvious the union was set to decertify, the owners late in the afternoon slashed their demand to $320 million annually while backing off their demand of an 18-game season. But the players, claiming the owners’ steadfast refusal to open their books on a team-by-team basis was a deal-breaker, dismissed the $325 million annual offer as unworthy even of another extension in the talks with Cohen.

Shortly after 5 p.m., Cohen emerged from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service building not far from the White House and declared an end to the negotiations. The union’s official decertification announcement came moments after that.

“For them to say our path was always decertification and that we did not engage in good-faith negotiations flies in the faith of reason, flies in the face of facts and is simply untrue,” the union’s Smith said last night in an emotional briefing with reporters at NFLPA headquarters.

The owners planned to challenge the union’s decertification as a sham in a plea to the National Labor Relations Board, but that challenge appears unlikely to succeed.

With the owners already retreating, a more likely outcome is a league-engineered settlement over the next few months that would produce the outcome everyone in this ugly saga desires — a new CBA and an end to the antitrust suit.

Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, who was part of the league’s negotiating committee the past two days, appeared to hint at that eventual result yesterday.

“This is a time for our fans not to be discouraged,” Richardson said. “I view [decertification] as a bump in the road. In due course we will have an agreement. There has been no anger and friction between the players and the teams . . . and in due course, we will have an agreement.”

What the NFLPA’s decertification means

How does decertifying help the players?

By decertifying, players can — and did yesterday — file an antitrust suit and request an injunction that would force the league to continue operating fully. In simplest terms, by decertifying, players hope to keep professional football in business under terms they like.

Can the NFLPA do anything now in the labor dispute?

It can make its attorneys available to help the players filing the antitrust lawsuits.

Has the NFLPA decertified before?

Yes, in 1989. It formed again in 1993 after antitrust suits by the players led to a new collective bargaining agreement.

Why decertify now?

In order to keep legal proceedings under the jurisdiction of player-friendly U.S. District Court Judge David Doty in Minneapolis, the union needed to decertify before the current CBA expired.

bhubbuch@nypost.com