Pats owner Kraft holds court

PHOENIX - Patriots owner Robert Kraft, one of the league's more influential owners, delved into a number of issues the league's 32 owners are grappling with this week.

One was moving ahead the revenue sharing program among owners to decide which teams would be qualifiers for additional funds.

"I think we came up with a program now that allows us to fulfill the last [piece] of the labor deal: a revenue sharing plan. If we hadn't agreed, and it only had two negative votes, then the commissioner would have had the unilateral power to decide. So this takes us through the past year and the next three years.

"I don't think anyone is 100 percent happy with it, but when we did our labor agreement it was contingent on having this plan. I think it was a wonderful compromise with the committee. I'm glad it didn't have to go to the commissioner and we got 30 out of 32 votes (Cincinnati and Jacksonville voted against). I think it's a very fair plan."

The revenue sharing issue and restoring civility among the owners, Kraft believes, was the most important thing to be accomplished this week and it already has.

"We have a great partnership in this league, as a business. We have to get the room back together as a whole. I think in this last labor negotiation there was a lot of division from within, and a lot of fracturing, and I think we have to work very hard to bring it together," Kraft explained. I think taking this qualifier issue off the table now allows us to try to get back to a balanced partnership with the union."

Asked about his teams' huge foray into the 2007 free agent market, Kraft said, "Every individual team's needs are different -- what's right for us might not be right for someone else -- and we knew that there were 25 teams that had a lot of cap room. So people were going to come fast off the market. We had to decide what was right for our franchise, and then be ready to move in the marketplace. We didn't like being one minute away from going to the Super Bowl, and anything we could do to make our team better and improve, that's what our focus was."