When the NFL owners first announced they were electing to opt out of the 2006 Collective Bargaining Agreement a year early, there was concern throughout the world of pro football and general pessimism as to where the move might lead. The owners' claim that the cost of doing business had risen to the point where they needed to keep a larger share of revenues from the players rang hollow, but it seemed reasonable to take a wait-and-see attitude.

In the ensuing months, it has appeared more and more as if the owners' real target is the floor in the salary cap, which has separated the NFL from other sports, limiting some owners' attempts to dramatically increase profits by forcing them to compete. While a change like that could do significant damage to the NFL's "on any given Sunday" factor, March 1, 2010, and the Armageddon it portends are still a ways off.

But when ESPN's Adam Schefter first reported on Dec. 6 that the owners have also decided to do away with the $100 million pool created in the 2006 CBA to help support the lowest-revenue clubs, it became impossible for anyone who loves the NFL to keep his head in the sand any longer. At least some of the current group of owners are committed to destroying the "golden goose," and their real target is revenue sharing.

In order to appease owners in smaller markets who believed from Day One that the agreement reached with the players at the 11th hour in '06 was too expensive, the owners agreed that the 15 highest-revenue teams each year would contribute $100 million to a pool from which the lowest-revenue teams could qualify to draw funds to guarantee their ability to remain competitive. The language in the CBA reads:

"The revenue sharing program described to the NFLPA by memorandum dated March 10, 2006, has been determined by the NFLPA to be satisfactory. Any material modification to that program must also be reasonably satisfactory to the NFLPA."

The owners claim the agreement applied only to seasons in which a salary cap is in place. The NFLPA's position is this is clearly a material change, of which it does not approve. Without access to that March 10, 2006, memo, it is impossible to guess who's right, and it appears a special master in arbitration will decide this issue.

Here's what is clear. By deciding to drop the pool based on its claim it only applied to capped years, the owners are acknowledging they have no intention of attempting to reach a new deal by March 1, in spite of repeated claims to the contrary. And they can no longer deny their goal is to do away with the salary cap as opposed to their claim they are seeking a larger share of revenue from the players. If there is going to be a cap in '10, regardless of the respective shares, they have no claim to make with the arbiter.

And here's what is far worse. As I've suspected since well before the owners opted out of the current CBA early, there is at least a segment of these people whose real target is revenue sharing. Admittedly, this $100 million pool represents just 1.5 percent of the $6.5 billion the owners share each year, but what possible benefit can there be for the good of the game from this move? This is about the rich getting richer, plain and simple, and with the exception of a few greedy owners, everyone who loves the game will suffer for it.

Football is a great game, period. But so are baseball, basketball, hockey and others. What has made the NFL so much more successful than other sports, beyond the game itself, is the once-a-week spectacle and anticipation each game offers, the additional interest generated by gambling and now fantasy football, and the revenue sharing that for years has guaranteed the competitive balance of the games and every team's ability to make money. Destroy revenue sharing and you'll destroy the game, and it's getting harder and harder every day for this group of owners to deny that's exactly where they're leading.

PFW has launched its brand-new NFL Draft Newsletter series, with the second issue now ready for mailing. Produced by PFW's player personnel department under the direction of Nolan Nawrocki, the series consists of four information-packed issues. For more info or to subscribe — click here for PDF e-pub or here for print format.