NFL, players courting trouble  Roger Goodell, Giants coach Tom
Coughlin leave yesterday's league meetings in New Orleans.
Posted: March 22, 2011  NEW ORLEANS - Joe Banner and DeMaurice
Smith both are very, very smart men. Yet their perception of the
NFL owners' last contract offer to the players 11 days ago
before all hell broke loose and Smith and the rest of the NFL
Players Association contingent stomped out of the federal
mediator's office and sued the league is, well, quite different.
Banner, the Eagles' president and a member of the league's
negotiating team, told the Daily News last week that he thought
the two sides were "damn close to a deal" before the union
bolted.  Smith, the executive director of the NFLPA, said in an
interview on Pro Football Talk Live yesterday that if the
players had accepted the owners' March 11 proposal, "it'd be the
worst deal in the history of sports."  You say tomoto, I say
tomato.  If you were hoping both sides in this labor spat were
going to come to their senses and tr