Labor disputes in professional sports are seldom understandable – they’re akin to two fat guys fighting over the last piece of pizza – but the NFL’s current squabble is particularly appalling.

The NFL is the goose that laid the golden egg. According to Forbes magazine, all 32 teams made a profit in 2004. Even the Arizona Cardinals, with their antiquated stadium and poor attendance, had an operating income of $16.2 million after expenses, the magazine reported.

You’ll rarely hear an NFL owner say he’s losing money. And if you do, he’s lying.

The players are living off the money tree as well. The salary cap has increased from $34.6 million per team in 1994 to $85.5 million last season. The average salary in 2005 was $1.4 million, according to the NFL Players Assn. That’s an 11 percent increase since 2003 and nearly double the average salary ($716,600) in 1995.

Know many employees who have gotten a 100 percent raise in the last decade? I don’t.

And yet, the rich players and the richer owners can’t seem to agree on a way to split their pot of gold.

How shameful. If I could, I’d send commissioner Paul Tagliabue and union chief Gene Upshaw to their rooms and make them skip dinner.

“It’s a joke, it really is,” Minnesota Vikings center Matt Birk told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Everyone is making money. A lot of money. You think anyone wants to hear about the money problems of the NFL owners or players? It’s bad (publicity) for the league. It’s bad for all of us.”

Coming (I wish) on pay-per-view for $49.95: Birk uses Tagliabue and Upshaw as tackling dummies.

The greed that’s driving this dispute is staggering.

Let’s start with the owners, who are fighting among themselves over how to divvy up the billions of dollars that line their pockets.

The really, really, really rich owners – like Washington’s Daniel Snyder and Dallas’ Jerry Jones – don’t want to share their local revenues (luxury suites, naming rights, etc.) with the really rich owners.

Their argument: If the Cincinnati Bengals want to eschew a corporate sponsor and honor one of their own by naming their stadium after Paul Brown, fine. But don’t ask for a cut of the Redskins’ naming rights (FedEx Field).

I’m with the super rich on this one. The NFL already rewards its homeless owners by equally sharing television revenue among all 32 teams. Every club received $87.5 million in 2005, and that figure is going to climb – to unprecedented heights.

The league’s most recent negotiations with its television partners – NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN and DirecTV – resulted in contracts worth $23.9 billion over the next eight years. That’s $747 million per team.

No wonder Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill won’t sell his team. He’s sitting on a gold mine.

Socialism has been good for the NFL – spreading the wealth gives more teams a chance to win – but owners should be able to pocket what they make on their own.

If Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is unable to generate as much local revenue as Jones or Snyder because the city of Buffalo is broke compared to Washington or Dallas, he can still get by on his $747 million.

As for those who worry the disparity in income will create a league of haves and have nots, a la major league baseball, that’s what a salary cap is for.

The players, meanwhile, say they’re willing to settle if they get 59 percent of the league’s gross revenues. How generous. Because, you know, the man is abusing them when he’s only giving up 56 percent of his revenue.