The NFL season begins tomorrow night, and while some folks are rightfully stoked about it, I can’t help but notice this 700-pound elephant in the room. No, it’s not Andre Smith. It’s this spectre of a season without NFL football in 2011.

I’ve written before about the possibility of NFL owners locking out players in 2011, and after reading this FanHouse piece about the ongoing frustrations of NFL Players Association chief DeMaurice Smith, I’m just about convinced that a year without the NFL is inevitable.

Basically, Smith wants to see the owners’ audited financial statements, so that the NFLPA can start negotiating on the next collective bargaining agreement. Roger Goodell and the owners are refusing, claiming Smith’s request is a “distraction” that’s preventing them from negotiations. Smith countered, “We’re still waiting for a proposal.”

Meanwhile, the owners have hired Bob Batterman, the lawyer who engineered the NHL lockout in 2004.

Here’s the thing. The bottom line is the bottom line for NFL owners. The NFL’s TV contracts pay out in 2011 regardless of whether a season is played or not. (And how tightly did the networks hold their noses when they agreed to that clause? I would have done more haggling than an Islamabad street market before signing off on that.) And since owners are wealthy old men who didn’t get their wealth by doing things that made them less money… well, you can see what’s coming.

The real question here, though, is what the owners’ hope to accomplish in the long term by ditching the 2011 season. They won’t engender any good will among their customers — especially those who forked over thousands for “Personal Seat Licenses” before even buying season tickets. Fans are fans, however, and they keep coming back for the spectacle. They came back after the infamous scab games in 1987. They’ll be back in 2012.

What about the TV networks? Certainly they won’t be too eager to hand the NFL billions again after a lockout, right? Well, the networks have their own troubles. Ad sales are down across the board, and traditional TV networks are fighting to stay relevant. So if that money isn’t going to be there anyway, the owners might as well take what they can get now. The league is still powerful enough that it can get a good deal from someone down the road.

So that puts the NFLPA in a bind. The owners are digging in and preparing to shut down in two years. Where do the players go? The UFL? Assuming that league even survives long enough to hold a 2011 season, the money ain’t there yet.

So this looks like a clear-cut case of the rich old bastards looking to break the union and slash players’ salaries at all costs, collateral damage be damned — and from the looks of things, the owners have most of the leverage, because this is the NFL, and it’s too big to fail.

None of this matters tomorrow night, of course. Tomorrow night, the 2009 season will begin, the fans will fill the stands and tune in and watch and cheer and tailgate and drink and all that, because it’s football, and we crave the spectacle of that like nothing else.

Enjoy it while it lasts, America. The gridiron apocalypse is two years away, and it makes me glad I’ve come to appreciate other football codes. The Association game will get me through 2011 okay. So will the AFL Finals Series, and possibly the Rugby World Cup, too. How about you?