“They employ us. They don’t own us.”

Usually, such a statement should not apply when an employee is paid handsomely, abounding with affluence, credibility and all the peripheral perks that come with a high level of excellence.

But if you’re Bryant Gumbel, the host of HBO’s “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel,” it most assuredly applies after all the nonsense outgoing commissioner Paul Tagliabue threw in his direction this week.

Gumbel, recently hired to do play-by-play for the NFL Network this season, gave some biting commentary, calling into question Tagliabue’s close relationship with Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn. Gumbel went as far as suggesting that the incoming commissioner, Roger Goodell, tell Tagliabue to “show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw’s leash,” calling the union boss Tagliabue’s “personal pet.”

Tagliabue fought back, saying, “I think things that Bryant Gumbel said about (Upshaw) and the owners are about as uninformed as anything I’ve read or heard in a long, long time.” And that is understandable.

That Tagliabue even took a moment to suggest Gumbel’s job with the NFL Network could be in jeopardy because of those comments was weak, petty and the epitome of modern-day bully tactics, regardless of the fact that Gumbel’s ouster no longer appears to be a reality.

These are troubling times, folks. Not as troubling as they are at other places in this world, but troubling nonetheless. When a network joins with the league commissioner to entertain the possibility of dismissing one of the most accomplished journalists of our time, it displays the corrosive elements growing by the day, designed specifically to keep us uninformed and controlled.

At all cost.

To be fair, Gumbel may have failed to provide the necessary dissertation on the NFL’s history in collective bargaining and, therefore, may have missed a few things.

He may have failed to mention that the NFL salary cap has escalated from nearly $35 million in 1989 to $102 million in 2006. And that the players are now afforded 59.5 percent of total league revenue. Most of us wouldn’t even attempt to argue how incendiary it is to call one human being another’s “pet.”

Yet I still find myself wondering what Tagliabue was talking about.

It was Tagliabue, scheduled to officially leave the commissioner’s office on Sept. 1, who called Gumbel’s statements “uninformed.” Tagliabue said he planned to talk with Goodell and executives at the NFL Network. Tagliabue publicly intimated that Gumbel’s job could be in jeopardy because of his disparaging remarks.

So why hasn’t Tagliabue explained what Gumbel was wrong about?

One can sit here and say Gumbel never should have opened his mouth. The idiots among us may argue that Gumbel had an agenda, that he needed attention despite having a multitude of platforms at his disposal over the last few decades.

The bigger issue, though, is this: If the Tagliabues of the world can get away with considering such actions against a man of Gumbel’s stature, what exactly does that mean for the rest of us?

What does that mean for the journalist in hot pursuit of the truth? Or the viewer starving for it?

If Tagliabue had his way, you’d see Gumbel but hear the commissioner’s voice.

How’s that for objective entertainment?