Carroll Angeles

ack to Indy to get clothes. I went with what I had. Fox told me I should retire that jacket when an
agreement got signed, so it's put up in the closet for good.''
Sartorial limitations aside, Saturday grew into such a role of leadership within the negotiations that he
virtually couldn't have excused himself from the talks, even if he wanted to at times. Dallas Cowboys
owner Jerry Jones grew to trust Saturday so much that he not once, but twice let Saturday use his corporate
jet to fly home to Amelia Island, Fla., during breaks from negotiations. Jones and Saturday actually rode
together on the plane coming from a negotiation session in Minnesota in June, with Jones headed for a
vacation home in Destin, Fla. And during the final stage of the CBA talks in July, Jones insisted that
Saturday use his jet to fly alone from New York City to Amelia Island to spend the weekend with his
family.
"I truly felt so sensitive to the fact that he was taking so much of his offseason time away from home, with
hours and hours and weeks and weeks invested in the negotiation process,'' Jones told me Thursday
morning on the phone. "It's one thing when you've done these types of meetings for years, but something
else when you've got young children and you're away for that long.”
"On that first trip, he got to listen to me tell those old war stories for two or three hours, and just as his
temperament was throughout the negotiations, he listened and was very interested the whole time. But it
was just a great chance to get to know him better, and to talk about the issues. And then later, there we were
standing in Times Square, and I just couldn't stand it that he was miles and miles away from that family of
his, so I had to do it. He took the plane and got home for the weekend.''
As generous as he has been known to be, Jones quickly added that he's not in the habit of lending out his
plane. But Saturday came to be seen as the key individual among the players' leadership, and he was one of
the few people in the negotiations, maybe the only one, that everyone on both sides seemed to trust. At the
risk of overstatement, his calming and uniting presence was nearly indispensable.
On the day before talks broke down between the players and owners back in early March, resulting in the
beginning of the lockout, it was Saturday who Goodell called in an effort to make some progress, meeting
with him privately for about an hour in the lobby of Saturday's Washington D.C. hotel. And a year ago this
month, when Goodell visited Colts training camp here in Anderson to address the players and talk about the
looming labor stand off, it was Saturday who had to quickly diffuse a tense and heated situation between
the commissioner and several players who were growing angrier by the second at Goodell's talking points.
"That was a rather intense meeting,'' Saturday recalled. "You're talking about men's livelihoods, and men
who are very protective of their families and the careers they have laid before them. So it did get heated. I
just jumped up and said, 'Hey, we're not going to get anywhere doing this. He's heard what our opinion is,
he knows where you guys stand. There's no reason to keep going. We're not gaining anything by doing this.
Just stop.' ''
Saturday admits there were many fruitless negotiation sessions during which he thought an answer to the
league's labor stalemate would never come. He likened the process to endlessly turning the sides of a
Rubik's Cube, waiting for the puzzle to finally solve itself.
"There were days when I didn't think we were going to get it done,'' he said. "I'd walk away and it seemed
like the gap between us was too wide, and there was no way we were going to get there. But it really is
about spending time and seeing how you can solve problems, and watching how many different owners or
players stepped up on a specific issue to say, 'Let's look at it this way, or what if we did this instead of
that?'''
Saturday also provided what I think many considered a signature moment of closure for the messy labor
battle between the players and owners. Ten years from now, one of the few things we'll all remember about
the NFL lockout of 2011 is the sight of the 6-2, 295-pound Saturday wrapping New England owner Robert
Kraft in a hug -- a Colt and a Patriot, no less! He did so to salute Kraft's sacrifice and commitment
throughout the process at the joint player-league news conference in Manhattan that announced the
agreement. Kraft had three days earlier attended the funeral of his beloved wife, Myra, who had died of