Philadelphia ? They can’t be this greedy.

Or this dumb.

Yes, negotiations in sports between bullheaded billionaire owners and millionaire athletes whose sense of entitlement is stimulated beyond all measure frequently come down to the 59th minute of the 11th hour. It happened in 2002 with baseball and last year in the NBA. There was ominous talk of strikes and lockouts, and at the last possible moment, there was a deal.

But it’s still hard to believe that the NFL and its players have reached this point – the verge of, if not a work stoppage, the planting of seedlings that could lead to one soon. Despite a 72-hour moratorium that delays the start of free agency for the 2006 NFL season until 11:01 tonight, there’s little hope of an extension of the current collective-bargaining agreement before then.

That would lead to a 2006 salary cap about $10 million lower than teams had anticipated – meaning painful cuts to many rosters, including starters and other big contributors – and would cost the players, collectively, hundreds of millions of dollars.

More ominously, it would set up the 2007 season – the last of the current CBA – as an uncapped year. And Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn., has been adamant that if his players ever taste the freedom of a capless season, they’ll never accept another one in a subsequent deal.

While NFL owners will never live without one.

Are these guys actually on the verge of blowing a hole in the most profitable sports business the world has ever seen?

And does all this labor talk glaze your eyes over as quickly as it does mine?

To recap, no sports league is as flush as the NFL. Its demographics and ratings dwarf those of every other sport, save NASCAR. It’s so far ahead of baseball, basketball and hockey in the American consciousness that those sports need a Sherpa just to get within a sniff of its dust.

And the NFL’s relationship with television is at the heart of that dominance.

The league’s latest round of negotiations with its television partners resulted in new contracts with NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN and satellite carrier DirecTV that total $23.9 billion over the next eight years – or more than $747 million per team during that stretch.

Let me repeat that.

Seven hundred forty-seven million dollars per team, over an eight-year period. Nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.

That is before a single ticket, beer or T-shirt is sold. And it doesn’t count new revenue streams from improved technologies and entities like the NFL Network, which will telecast regular-season games starting next season.

Once again: If you own an NFL team, you have to be a drooling, blithering idiot not to make millions.

Players have done well, too. The salary cap has increased from $34.6 million per team in 1994 to $85.5 million last season. And each team will pay out almost $14 million more in benefits to its players next season.

Everybody’s getting rich doing business with the NFL. Players, owners, coaches. Assistant coaches. Fans are deliriously happy with the product, and there is an insatiable appetite for more.

But the two sides are still having trouble splitting the pie.

Which is insane.

This isn’t about competitive balance, or imbalance. It’s about pure, unadulterated greed.