Players union devising plan to prevent top college players from attending draft in New York

The failure to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement has caused the players union to de-certify and the NFL teams to lock out the players.

That might be just the beginning of a dispute between competing sides that makes rivalries like Packers-Bears, Patriots-Jets and, uhh, Browns-Steelers look like touch football games at a family picnic.

The draft is the NFL's marquee off-season event and, in fact, is the highlight of the football year for many fans of perennially bad teams.

Now, according to a report by ESPN.com's Adam Schefter, the Players Association is looking to dampen draft-day fun, at least as much as it can.

And, should the players' plan work, it would diminish the ESPN network's signature event.

Schefter writes, in part:  

The NFL Players Association is putting into place a plan that would prevent each top college prospect from attending next month's draft in New York, according to multiple league sources. The NFLPA already has contacted 17 top prospects that ordinarily would have received an invitation to attend the draft and informed them not to go.

Thus, when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announces the name of the first player selected, the player will not walk on to the stage at Radio City Music Hall as has been the custom. And the player will not be there to do interviews with ESPN or NFL Network. The draft will go on, but not in the manner in which it has been conducted before.

"As of right now, this is 100 percent happening," said one source familiar with the Players Association's thinking. "This is going down."