I have not seen the new movie Legion, but I have seen trailers and read reviews and the big-budget apocalyptic thriller is by all accounts a disaster. Similarly, I have not seen the backroom collective bargaining agreement (CBA) discussions between the NFL Players Association and the team owners, but I have seen trailers (the three debacles known as the 1994-95 MLB strike, the 1998-99 NBA strike, and 2004-05 NHL lockout) and have read the reviews (Tim Graham’s February 1st ESPN column) and am pretty sure it would be a disaster of actual biblical proportions.

It is sad that this has come up on the eve of what I have hyped in mind to be the best Super Bowl of all time, but I fear that the league will be ending its era of domination among professional sports leagues soon and the harbinger of doom is Bob Batterman. Batterman is representing the NFL owners as part of the powerful law firm Proskauer Rose. Batterman famously represented the NHL owners in 2004 and brought the wrath of a lockout season (the first major sport to actually go through with this threat) and pretty much devastated the league until Sidney Crosby can become a star recognized by all sports fans.

The worst case scenario is that the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) balks at the owners demands and all the rules that made the NFL the one league that thrived in a system that promoted parity are out the window. This will be decided March 5, 2010, 33 days after the Super Bowl. This is the first sign of the NFL Apocalypse, and unlike in the Bible in which there are seven, there are only two signs before all the ground the game has made in the last decade is lost.

From the owners’ point if view, they were reamed at the last negotiations in 2006 and now they want to establish a more hospitable economic climate for themselves, which means they want a bigger chunk of that $8 billion dollar machine known as the NFL (mind-boggling isn’t it?). They currently get 40 percent of that total amount, with which they have taken all the financial risk. They build the new stadiums, fund the renovations, and keep the practice facilities up to date (well, actually they cover the difference that our tax dollars do not fund). They want more, much more.

They want NFL players to accept an 18 percent rollback for salaries. That may just be a beginning point, but even the compromise would be a huge pay cut. I fear that the players may be willing to roll the dice faced with a possible double digit reduction in pay. They, after all, take the physical risk in simply taking the field. All that money they make in a relatively short athletic career goes to paying for a house, a car, supporting a family, paying what the insurance will not for the aftereffects of previous concussions, and, of course, lewd boat trips in Minnesota.

If the players do make some concessions or the owners maintain a hard line then the 2010 NFL regular season will be the beginning of the end. There will be no salary cap, which means no enforced maximums or minimums and no financial penalties of any sort for teams. For some players, the lack of an established minimum has to be terrifying. For others with longer, bigger guaranteed contracts the lack of salary cap rules is terrifying because it would allow teams to simply cancel contracts without any monetary penalty.

For my part, I feel more sympathy for the typical NFL player. They are most likely spending their 3.5 year career on the bench, hurtling their body down the field on special teams and occasionally stepping in for a starter. They make closer to the league minimum than the fan realizes and most likely will have to take up some career after their short professional football career is over. How many of these guys saved wisely? How many of these guys actually paid attention in their college classes? How many of these guys actually have a real job skill other than sacrificing their body for millions of sports fans? How would the insurance industry handle such an influx of agents?

It is these players that will lose big in 2010 and these players that will lose even bigger on March 5, 2011 if the two sides have still not reached an agreement. Batterman could convince the owners to enact a lockout, ending the 2011 season before it even began. These bench players would suddenly have lost a year of that short-lived career and would most certainly be replaced by cheaper younger talent from the new college class. They essentially would lose a third of their life-time earnings as a professional athlete.

Of course all that is all theoretical right now. All we know for sure is and that the NFL is now a passing league, that the Super Bowl is this Sunday, and that Tim Tebow will not get as much tail as an NFL utility player as he did as a college quarterback in Florida.