NFL and referees agree on a 7-year collective bargaining agreement, avoiding potential work stoppage

The NFL and the NFL Referees Association agreed Friday on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement that avoids a potential work stoppage and use of replacement officials.

The agreement, which was approved by the union's board of directors and ratified by a vote of the membership, runs through the 2032 NFL season.

“We see this new CBA as a partnership with the league that benefits our membership but also seeks to make our game better. It is good to get these negotiations behind us so we can focus on preparing for the 2026 season,” union President Carl Cheffers said.

The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the referees association had been set to expire on May 31, and the two sides began negotiating in the summer of 2024.

The league began the onboarding process for replacement officials last month because negotiations weren’t progressing. But they won’t be necessary.

The league and the union said in a joint statement that the deal covers a wide range of issues including economics, performance and accountability.

“This agreement is a testament to the joint commitment of the league and union to invest in and improve officiating,” said Troy Vincent, NFL executive vice president of football operations. “It also speaks to the game officials’ relentless pursuit of improvement and officiating excellence. We look forward to working together for the betterment of the game.”

Detailed terms weren't released.

But two people with knowledge of the offer told The Associated Press in March that the NFL had increased its offer to a 6.45% annual growth rate in compensation over a six-year labor deal.

A stalemate in 2012 resulted in a 110-day lockout and replacement referees were used.

That led to several high-profile mistakes, including the Fail Mary when Russell Wilson completed a desperation pass to Golden Tate in the closing seconds to lift Seattle over Green Bay in a Monday night game. Tate pushed off so he should’ve been penalized for offensive pass interference. He appeared to wrestle the ball away from a Packers defender and was given credit for a catch even though two officials had called it differently.

There weren’t as many glaring errors when the NFL also used replacement officials for one week of exhibition games and the opening week in 2001 before the labor dispute was resolved shortly after 9/11, and the regular officials returned in time when the season resumed following a one-week break.

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FILE - Referee Shawn Hochuli (83) and back judge Jimmy Russell (82) review a play at the instant replay cart during an NFL football game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the New York Giants, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)

FILE - Referee Shawn Smith, left, reviews a play during the NFL Super Bowl 60 football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

FILE - Field judge Alonzo Ramsey, left, back judge Greg Wilson and down judge Jerod Phillips confer during an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear, File)

FILE - A referee picks up a penalty flag during an NFL football game between the Cleveland Browns and the Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/David Richard, File)

FILE - Referee Land Clark annouces a penalty during the second half of an NFL football game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Atlanta Falcons Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Schools and universities across the country are recovering from an outage that knocked down Canvas, an online platform that manages exams, course notes, lecture videos and grades. The disruption tied to a cyberattack hit in the middle of finals period for many colleges, a high-stress time when students and instructors rely heavily on the platform.

By late Thursday, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, said the platform was available again to most users.

The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. On Friday, Instructure and Canvas no longer appeared on a site where ShinyHunters lists its targets.

Some schools, however, have continued to block students and teachers from accessing Canvas, citing an abundance of caution while assessing security threats.

Here's what to know about the outage.

Schools and universities use Canvas to manage nearly all aspects of instruction. The platform acts as a gradebook, a hub for digital lectures and course materials, a discussion board for classroom projects, and a messaging platform between students and instructors.

Some courses also give quizzes and exams on the platform, or use it as a portal where final projects and papers are submitted on deadline.

ShinyHunters is a loose association of teenage and young adult hackers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom who have been linked to other large-scale cyberattacks, including one on Ticketmaster, Connolly said. On the page listing their targets, the group describes itself as “rooting your systems since ‘19,” using a term for accessing a computer system’s deepest layer.

Earlier this week, ShinyHunters said that nearly 9,000 schools and 275 million individuals' data could be leaked if schools did not pay the ransom by a deadline of May 6. The group then extended the deadline, indicating some schools had engaged with them to negotiate.

In a statement posted to ShinyHunters' ransomware site, the group said it would not be commenting on the incident.

Schools and universities, rich in personally-identifiable information on students, teachers and employees, have become prime targets for criminal hackers in ransomware attacks. Targets can be individual districts, like the Minneapolis Public Schools or Los Angeles Unified School District, or external vendor platforms like Canvas or PowerSchool that education systems increasingly rely on to manage schedules, courses and exams.

The data breach appeared to involve student ID numbers, email addresses, names and messages on the Canvas platform, Instructure’s chief information security officer, Steve Proud, said in an update shared Saturday. He said the company had not found evidence that passwords, dates of birth, government identification or financial information were compromised.

Though most schools seem to have restored access to Canvas, the disruptions to finals period are likely to ripple throughout the week.

The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth said that it would postpone exams scheduled for Friday and Saturday to ensure students had time to review course materials that would not have been accessible during the shutdown.

The University of Illinois postponed all exams that were scheduled to take place Friday, Saturday or Sunday for all classes, regardless of whether the courses utilized Canvas.

And Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland continued to limit access to Canvas on Friday, citing an abundance of caution “while we work to better understand the full impact of the incident and any potential vulnerabilities involving information connected to the platform.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

FILE - People take photos near a John Harvard statue, left, on the Harvard University campus, Jan. 2, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)