THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

It's Tuesday and it's snowing...wait a minute, it's February in Cincinnati, why is this a shock to anyone?

This may have been the last Super Bowl you’ll be able to enjoy for awhile. There will be at least one more, after this upcoming season. But the talk around that game will be more about labor troubles in the NFL than about blocks and tackles. The NFL is headed for a road block.

The owners want out of their basic bargaining agreement with the players association. The owners signed off on a new deal in 2006. But, within months, there was buyers remorse.

Now the NFL owners have exercised an opt out. They want a do over. And the players union is in no mood to give them one. I’ve been told by people who should know that the real intent of the owners here is to permanently break the union.

In 2006, when Paul Tagliabue was the NFL commissioner and the late Gene Upshaw ran the NFLPA, the owners signed off on a deal that guaranteed their players 59-percent of the teams gross revenue. It was then, and remains now, the highest ‘cut’ of any of the four major sports. The owners say, it’s too high. And since 2007, or there abouts, they’ve been girding for a lockout. The target season: 2011. Everything the owners have done leads you to believe they will lock out the players in 2011, effectively stopping the games. The owners have hired the man who engineered the National Hockey League’s player lockout from a few years back. The owners have negotiated a contract with their television partners that will guarantee them payments form the networks, even if there are no games to televise.

Now you’re thinking, OK, 2011 is a long way off. But the impact will be immediate. Because the owners have opted out of their agreement with the players (which incidentally they had every right to do, given the contract language) 2010 will be an uncapped year. That means teams can spend as little as they want on player salaries this upcoming season, or a much as they want. Guess which side teams like the Patriots, Redskins and Cowboys will come down on. Guess which side your Cincinnati Bengals will choose.

Owners with deep pockets and big egos, like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder could spend past imagination to try and build a championship team. Don’t think it could happen? In 2007, Snyder spent $130-million more than the Minnesota Vikings. Not $130 million dollars in salaries. $130-million dollars MORE than the Vikings.

Ir’s more than just dollars. It’s the stark reality of trying to fix a football team that might be just a player or two away from being really good. Think, your Cincinnati Bengals.

Up until this year, a player with four seasons of NFL under his belt would be available for some form of free agency. Not now. In this uncapped year of 2010, the years of service goes up to six. That will cut down on the free agent pool. Players like Denver’s Elvis Dumervil and San Diego’s Darren Sproels, are now off the market.

The top eight playoff finishers from the previous season would be allowed to sign free agents only at the rate at which they lose them. So maybe there’s a silver lining after all, to the Bengals stinking it up in the first round of the playoffs.

Each team would be allowed to restrict two eligible free agents with "franchise" or "transition" player tags, rather than one., further limiting the free agent pool. In essence, the chances for a team that is, shall we say frugal, of getting better overnight, aren’t all that good.

You heard a lot of rhetoric this week from the union boss, Demaurice Smith and from NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell. You’ll hear a lot more in the coming weeks and months. With no deal in place by this time next year, the strike rhetoric will overwhelm the game. A lot of voices are saying today that the NFL and it’s union won’t allow it to get to a point where the 2011 season is interrupted, that there is too much money on the line for both sides to kill this golden goose. But we heard that in 1982 and again in 1987. And both times a major piece of the seasons were interrupted.

It could happen again.