According to Drew Brees, the NFL Lockout is almost over. According to Chad Ochocinco, it’s far from over. Either way, while the NFLPA* and team owners met into the late hours last night, James Harrison’s big mouth continues to be the top NFL news because that’s all we’ve got. Well, except for Hines Ward’s DUI, and he must be absolutely loving Harrison right now.

Harrison recently sat down for an interview with Paul Solotaroff of Men’s Journal, which I once read on an airplane, and he sounded off about everything from his hatred of Roger Goodell to his problems with his own teammates. And if you haven’t already read the article, Harrison really sounded off. Most notably, he called out Ben Roethlisberger for some mistakes in the Super Bowl and pointed out that he’s not Peyton Manning, he labeled Rashard Mendenhall as a “fumble machine”, he said that Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing is “juiced out of his mind”, and he called Roger Goodell many things, including (allegedly) a f*ggot. Harrison also defended his reputation, most notably as a thug, but… hey, did I mention that banner pic is the lead image from the article?

And with all of that on paper, published and available on magazine racks, Harrison claims he was misquoted and Solotaroff, the guy who says he has notebooks full of other quotes and hours of digital interviews, agrees.

“We talked about 11 o’clock yesterday morning,” Solotaroff said on Thursday. “Look, James is the guy who’s got to live with Ben for the next three years. . . . So as I told James, ‘Listen, whatever you’ve got to say to mend fences is perfectly fine with me.’” (Via Pro Football Talk)

That’s the quote that really should stop the story. Solotaroff is an admittedly big fan of Harrison, which moves this article from “insightful interview” to “sloppy knob polish” and renders it irrelevant, as far as journalistic integrity. Essentially, Solotaroff told Harrison that he can say whatever he wants and he’ll manipulate and fix it after the fact. As I learned in one of the few journalism classes I stayed awake during, that’s not kosher.

But what is relevant is that Harrison has a big mouth and he said a bunch of things that he can’t take back. Cushing has since said he would pray for Harrison, whatever that means, and it has been reported that Roethlisberger and Mendenhall will take Harrison at his word (translated: they’ll share some “What the f*ck”s in private). Goodell, though, is a different story. While he has his hands full trying to make sure that Harrison and the rest of the players have a job this season, I can’t imagine that he’s going to look to favorably upon a guy that he has never looked favorably upon.

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Funny or Die has a knack for cramming as many celebrities as possible into three minute video, and today they’ve outdone themselves — watch in amazement has Ray Liotta, Kevin Costner, Dennis Haysbert, the Were-llama from Twilight and half of professional football bring you a Lockout-flavored sequel to the greatest baseball movie of all time, Field of Dreams. I’m guessing Haysbert is here because when the Funny or Die guys showed up at James Earl Jones’ apartment he attacked them with an insecticide sprayer and told them to go back to the sixties.

Watch the video below, but I have to warn you: the football players are all better actors than Taylor Lautner.

It’s weird, I know this is supposed to be a joke, but it still looks like a better movie than that remake of Footloose.

I love Kevin Costner at the end. He gives as little a sh** as possible, and he’s a good sport, but his voice and the look on his face say “I can’t believe you guys are making fun of this”. Lautner just stands there smirking, thinking about how awesome of a Crash Davis Robert Pattinson would be.

I just got back from the airport, and this is the post I keep behind the glass that reads IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK OPEN, so here we are.

There is absolutely nothing going on today in sports. Nothing…unless you count the women’s NCAA tournament, which I don’t. And let’s not make this a big gender debate, either. I just don’t watch it. A lot of people don’t watch the NHL, either, but you never not call the NHL a sport. Cumbersome grammar aside, I think I made my point: Nothing happening. Except this photo edit of Roger Goodell’s face on some porn star’s body. I dare you to call this anything but news.

I envision Roger Goodell as a forceful lover. That Catholic upbringing can have a stifling effect on bedroom creativity. Plus there’s the whole ginger thing. Problems at work. Facing a big potential pay cut this fall. These all seem like ingredients for violent coitus. Not that I’m thinking about getting intimate with the NFL commissioner or anything. It just seemed more interesting than talking about the Knicks.

I’m sure there’s some sports news and gossip out there someplace, and we’ll find it. You can spend the next 60 minutes washing your eyeballs out. Thanks as always for reading With Leather.

UPDATE: NFLPA Decertified. More at SI.com.

Unless a third extension is issued, the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players will expire at 5 pm ET midnight tonight, triggering a near-certain decertification of the players’ union and antitrust lawsuit against the league from the sport’s biggest stars. The league seems intent on preventing that, now more than ever, and reportedly have charged their commissioner, Roger Goodell with some power to act unilaterally if he sees fit.

One NFL source said that on a conference call with owners Thursday, commissioner Roger Goodell was given the freedom to move drastically, if need be, to make a deal with players. There were indications Goodell would present a last, best offer to the players this morning, one that might have a significant concession about financial transparency in the 32 NFL teams’ audited financial statements, which is the sticking point with players in these talks.

–SI.com.

So what does that mean? I doubt it means, “show them the books,” which seems to be the only concession the NFL could make to keep this negotiation going. The momentum seems to be on the side of the players, and Goodell’s two-minute drill here probably won’t be enough to keep the NFL out of court. As Lt. Frank Drebin would say, it’s 4th and 15 and Goodell is looking at a full-court press. He’ll have to stay out of the penalty box to have the time to go to his bullpen and get that golden goal. By the way, I faked every orgasm.

As the NFL holds America’s sports pages hostage for the second consecutive week, one big development in the collective bargaining negotiations between the league and its players has come to light: there will not be an 18-game regular season on the horizon.

“First of all, the league has never presented a formal proposal for 18 games,” [NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith] (not pictured) told SI.com. “But more importantly, it’s something that our players don’t want. Eighteen games is not in the best interest of our players’ safety, so we’re not doing it.”

What Smith does want is for the NFL’s teams to share their financial information, a request that the NFL has adamantly opposed for the balance of its existence. Smith retorted the league’s refusal to open its books by asking, “How much financial information would you want before you write a $5 billion check?”

Is this progress? At least they’re arguing about somewhat new things this week. But we’ll have a Chinese pope before the NFL decides to publicly share financial information with anyone. I personally would love a Chinese pope, but that doesn’t mean that I love Chinese everything. And you’ll never find DNA that proves otherwise.

I just taped a podcast with Brad Jackson at The New Ledger discussing the NFL’s labor negotiations with its players and the probability of a lockout, replacement players, and an 18-game season. I’m linking it here because we’ve discussed it so little here. That’s, admittedly, by design.

Even if there is a lockout, or an antitrust lawsuit against the league, I don’t see it affecting the actual football we’ll see this fall. Even Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this deal could get done in a week, and considering that all of the players are in shape year-round, we could see negotiation gridlock until August and still not face the threat of canceled games. But we have a bunch of sportswriters and NFL beat guys with nothing better to do than to pronounce total doom for the sporting landscape as we know it, so here we are.

If you want to listen to me break it down, you can listen here.