New line is drawn

Talks between NFL owners and the Players Association are approaching an abyss from which there is no healthy return. They are becoming more of a testosterone test than a business discussion.

It is what happened several times in Major League Baseball until things got so bad the World Series was canceled. It got so bad in hockey that the owners and the union attempted professional suicide, a work stoppage from which neither side has fully recovered. Now pro football, the game that is truly America's pastime, is approaching the same point of no return despite the fact that the issues are not all that complicated anymore.

These things are always about the money, but there's no longer an argument that total gross revenues should be what the salary cap is based on instead of designated gross revenues, which was a way of the owners saying, ''You're not getting a cut of it all." That time has passed. Even the most Grinchlike owners understand that.

There's still an argument over what percentage of total gross revenues will be used, with union leader Gene Upshaw insisting on more than 60 percent (64 to start) and the owners holding firm at 57. But both sides know it will end up somewhere around 61 percent, and if that number were thrown out tomorrow, both would accept it.

So what's the real beef? It's about the players wanting to be treated like what the owners and commissioner Paul Tagliabue kept telling them they are. They're all stuck on the word ''partner." To the NFLPA, ''partner" means having a say in how the owners run their side of the business. To the owners, ''partner" means employees with better benefits.

That, in a nutshell, is what's causing the impasse that now threatens both the short-term and the long-term future of a game someone like Bob Kraft never would have gotten into if his ''partners" hadn't traded their legal rights for a salary cap that makes labor cost a fixed number. It's a number that can be relied on not only by an owner but, more important, by the accountants of a future owner. That has resulted in ever-swelling franchise values, values their player ''partners" have helped create but get no share of.

Despite all you'll hear about percentage of gross revenues as Upshaw's soft March 3 and hard March 9 deadlines for an extension of the collective bargaining agreement approach, this has become an issue about power and about what Kraft once called ''the difference between being a renter and being an owner."

According to a management source familiar with the work of the negotiating committee, the real sticking point is Upshaw's insistence that the burgeoning local revenues of the top nine teams be shared equally with the less successful -- and some owners say less hard-working -- franchises. The owners insist that while they are willing to put all the teams' revenue into the salary cap pot, it is up to them what, if any, portion of local revenue will be shared.

Owners such as Kraft, the Eagles' Jeff Lurie, the Redskins' Daniel Snyder, and the Cowboys' Jerry Jones feel it's unfair to see their team generating the bulk of that local revenue while getting back only one-32d of it while someone like the Cardinals' Bill Bidwill produces barely a trickle in local revenue or the Bengals' Mike Brown refuses to lease signing rights to his new stadium because it's named after his father. In the opinion of the Gang of Nine, and more than a few other owners, that's simply unfair.

Upshaw, according to multiple sources familiar with last week's negotiating sessions, is insisting all teams share that local revenue equally under the theory that if it doesn't happen, the gap may widen between the top revenue producers and the lowest, and more teams will begin running at or near the salary cap minimum rather than at or near the maximum.

An NFC owner made the point last week when he said flatly, ''It's none of their business how we divide our revenue."

Texans owner Bob McNair, one of that Gang of Nine, said Friday, ''We have a revenue-sharing program in place that tries to address the needs of small-market clubs that might need help on a temporary basis. I think everyone in the league wants all of the clubs to be competitive, so to the extent that clubs need help to be competitive, I think that there has been a willingness on the part of large-market teams to be supportive of that effort. When it goes beyond any requirement to be competitive, and it's just a redistribution of profits, that's a different issue.

''I think all of the focus on the part of the large-market clubs is: How do we make this league a vibrant league going forward in the future? That's our interest. I think that we're in favor of any action that allows us to have that. I think we would be opposed to any action that would infringe on the ability of the league to prosper in the future."

As to the possibility of some owners suing others to block such revenue-sharing, McNair said, ''I'm not aware of any threats that anyone has made. Everyone has their own particular financial interest. I'm sure that everyone has a fiduciary responsibility to protect their own financial interests but I don't see that sort of thing happening. I would hope that we'll come to a good resolution."

Last week, though, Steelers owner Dan Rooney said he felt there was now a greater division between different groups of owners than there was between the owners combined and the NFLPA, a suggestion McNair rejected in a way that only served to emphasize the widening rift.

''I wouldn't agree with that," McNair said. ''I think that the big problem is between the Players Association and the owners. We have a very healthy league and we want it to remain healthy. There's been a big difference between what the Players Association wants and what the owners can do. In reference to differences between the owners, I'm confident we'll resolve those differences when we're ready to do it [emphasis added]."

This leads the union to wonder whatever happened to that ''partnership" Tagliabue and owners like Kraft loved to talk about during the past 12 years of labor peace, when the union was signing off on things like an illegal college draft and an illegal salary cap and an illegal manipulation of the marketplace for players. Antitrust laws normally would ban such endeavors but they are not in effect as long as the union willingly bargains them away in exchange for money and benefits. But now Upshaw wants the players to be treated like true partners. They want a say in how those owners divide up the swelling pot of local revenue, which in some cases is a difference of $100 million between teams.

In the same vein, the union has in the past agreed to sign off on G-3 loans, which are made by the league to teams to help build new stadiums in an era when many taxpayers finally began to realize it was absurd to be funding stadiums for rich guys.

G-3 required union approval because the money came off the top of the designated gross revenue pool that established the salary cap. To the union, that meant the players were helping fund these new stadiums, which increased franchise values, yet they did not share in that increase when a team such as the Vikings was sold for a huge profit. What the union now wants, as a ''partner," is a cut of that, too, something the owners are refusing.

That's the danger in telling people they're your ''partners" when they're really your employees: There's always the possibility they'll believe you.

This is now what the NFL is facing, a revolt of its employee ''partners," and these negotiations are no longer simply about money and benefits. They're about power.

If the owners decide to show the players the difference between an owner and a renter, as Kraft once said needed to be done with Bill Parcells, there will be no extension of the collective bargaining agreement, and Upshaw knows it. It's why he went home Friday from Indianapolis rather than stay to negotiate further with a Management Council he feels is not hearing him. It's why he told player agents in a meeting Friday to negotiate deals as if there would be no CBA extension and hence no cap at all in 2007, which is the final year of the present deal.

Most of all, it's why these negotiations are careening toward something neither side really wants. Momentum is running away from common sense now and turning this into a test of, as the great heavyweight Joe Frazier once said, ''whose heart pumps Kool-Aid."

Longtime player agent Leigh Steinberg said, ''The fact that we have labor peace does one amazing thing for football: It creates certainty in fans' minds that games will be played, and it's allowed the NFL to catapult to the No. 1 entertainment attraction in the United States, and allows NFLPA and the NFL to jointly go out and create all these ancillary revenue streams and has ushered in an era of unparalleled prosperity. That's what it does. Even though it's a flawed system, the fact that we have labor peace has created this incredible era of prosperity for everybody involved.

''If we pull the genie out of that bottle, I don't know if it ever comes back. If we get to that uncapped year and everyone involved in professional football gets to state their objections and we get all sorts of proud men with their backs up against the wall, I don't think that we ever get a collective bargaining agreement together again, and we may go another 10 years [without one].

''So even though I think the uncapped year would be like the Oklahoma land rush or the California gold rush, I don't know that we ever get back to [a CBA] again. So I hope that we don't ever get there."

With less than a week left before the league's business year begins March 3 without a CBA extension, and with at least a half-dozen teams about to be thrown into financial chaos because of a shortening of the length of years over which contracts and bonus money can be pro-rated if that happens, professional football is staring down the barrel of the same gun that blew up hockey and baseball.

Because when negotiations become a testosterone test to show who has the most power rather than a way to accomplish what makes the most sense, they usually end up one way: in a wreck. It's not too late for that to be avoided, but the battle lines are hardening. Worse, so are hearts and minds on both sides.