We heard that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was trying to persuade owners not to vote now on opting out early of the Collective Bargaining Agreement because Goodell feared that the move would trigger bad press for the league.

Apparently, the ultimate decision was to move forward — and then to try to control the P.R. regarding the move.

Moments after posting an item about the unanimous decision to pull the plug after the 2010 season, we received by e-mail a press release from the Baltimore Ravens setting forth several management-side talking points.

The release emphasizes the fact that football will continue without interruption for at least three more seasons. 

The release also characterizes the uncapped year (2010) as a “season [that] will be played without a salary cap under rules that also limit the free agency rights of the players,” which is an accurate description that many players simply don’t realize.

The release characterizes the issues as follows:

“A collective bargaining agreement has to work for both sides. If the agreement provides inadequate incentives to invest in the future, it will not work for management or labor. And, in the context of a professional sports league, if the agreement does not afford all clubs an opportunity to be competitive, the league can lose its appeal.

“The NFL earns very substantial revenues.  But the clubs are obligated by the CBA to spend substantially more than half their revenues — almost $4.5 billion this year alone — on player costs. In addition, as we have explained to the union, the clubs must spend significant and growing amounts on stadium construction, operations and improvements to respond to the interests and demands of our fans. The current labor agreement does not adequately recognize the costs of generating the revenues of which the players receive the largest share; nor does the agreement recognize that those costs have increased substantially — and at an ever increasing rate — in recent years during a difficult economic climate in our country.  As a result, under the terms of the current agreement, the clubs’ incentive to invest in the game is threatened.

“There are substantial other elements of the deal that simply are not working.  For example, as interpreted by the courts, the current CBA effectively prohibits the clubs from recouping bonuses paid to players who subsequently breach their player contacts or refuse to perform.  That is simply irrational and unfair to both fans and players who honor their contracts. Also irrational is that in the current system some rookies are able to secure contracts that pay them more than top proven veterans.”

The last paragraph is the key, in our view. This fight might not be about reducing the 59 cents on the dollar that the players now receive. The goal might be to ensure that the players don’t try to get more — and to reverse the terms from the last CBA that the league overlooked as the owners tried to come up with an acceptable plan for sharing unshared revenues.

And that’s the one issue that the release ignores: The ability of the owners to come up with a long-term solution to the problem of the disparity in total revenues between teams making the most, and teams making the least. The use of a salary cap based on all revenues makes the player costs eat more deeply into the profits of the teams that generate the least revenue.

The supplemental revenue sharing plan apparently isn’t making enough of the owners happy, and it’s a problem that could ultimately cause the owners to fracture.

So even though a possible work stoppage is the thing about which most fans will periodically fret over the next couple of years, the actual worst-case scenario is the splitting of the NFL into two leagues — one with teams that share every penny, and one with teams that follow the “every man for himself” mold.