Cowboys owner Jerry Jones recently reiterated his belief that his colleagues will vote to cancel the final two years of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Such a move would cause the deal with the union to end after the 2010 season.

The main reason for Jones’ belief in this regard is that, as we’ve previously reported, 24 teams must affirmatively vote to continue the deal.

“It is difficult to get 24 votes to do anything in the NFL, because you could easily have nine different teams for nine different reasons that don’t want to go along with different aspects of the labor deal,” Jones said, according to the Dallas Morning News.  “It’s a real challenge when you have nine clubs that can decide they want to opt out and it affects all 32 teams.“

He’s right.  Some teams might choose to bail early because they think that the players are getting too much of the revenue.  Others might do it because they don’t like the supplemental revenue sharing system.  Others might do it because they think the league was snookered by the union regarding non-economic terms, like the inability as of 2006 to send a player home with pay.  Others might do it because they owe a favor to one of the other owners voting to opt out.

Though Jones hasn’t expressed his own views on this matter, we can’t imagine that he’d want to take a chance on missing out on revenues from that $1.1 billion stadium he’ll christen in 2009.

If the owners cancel the deal two years early, 2010 will have no salary cap.  Just as importantly, 2009 will be subject to the rules of the last capped year, which will make the numbers side of the business more challenging.

Thus, as we’ve previously explained, the league and the union should be talking right now about working out a new deal