For those of you who have followed the National Football League only for the past 20 years, start preparing yourself for a rude awakening.

You don’t remember the nine-game season followed by a 16-team playoff in 1982 (sounds almost like something college football playoff fans would die for).

You don’t know about Tony Dorsett calling Randy White “Captain Scab” as the defensive tackle crossed the Cowboys’ picket line in 1987 . . . only to be followed the next day by Dorsett when he learned the deferred payments in his contract would be voided if he continued to stay on strike.

For fans, the NFL has been pain-free for 20 years, at least on the labor front in terms of a nice, clean, 16-game schedule brought right into your living room big screen each weekend.

Major League Baseball skipped the playoffs and World Series in 1994. The NBA skipped half the season in 1998-99. The National Hockey League shut down for an entire season to get its house in order (and, yes, people did notice, thank you very much) four years ago.

The NFL has known no such strife for two decades, but signs suggest that is about to change. The sudden death of NFL Players Association executive president Gene Upshaw further clouds a murky situation.

The NFL has had a firm salary cap in place since the 1993 season. But the 2010 season will be uncapped with teams free to spend (or not) as they choose, barring progress on the labor front.

Players are in favor of ridding the game of the cap. Certainly, it will benefit the superstars. How it impacts the rookies and special teams players remains to be seen.

Owners are in favor of scrapping the cap for two reasons. The lower-revenue teams think the system favors the owners with the newest stadiums and the greater revenues. And they are not wrong.

If everyone has the same $116 million salary cap and the revenues are inequitable due to luxury suites and other revenue streams, then, yes, it does favor the fat cats.

And yet, the high-end owners want to dump the system, too. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones doesn’t come out and say it, but he and others would love to be able to add that extra player or two that might change the outcome of a Super Bowl.

So the two sides are, figuratively, drawing their bayonets and waiting for the other side to blink. Don’t bet on the players blinking.

In recent months, as the two sides headed for this conflict, Upshaw, who has been criticized from all sides for caving in to the owners, suddenly turned tough.

“I’m not going to sell the players on a cap again,” Upshaw said. “Once we go through the cap, why should we agree to it again?”

Was this what Upshaw really felt? Or was it the inevitable rhetoric that a union leader must promulgate months before the real negotiations begin?

Remember NHL union leader Bob Goodenow saying publicly and telling union reps that players would never accept a cap . . . even while he tried to negotiate one privately with management?

With owners at both ends of the spectrum seeking change in the system that, at least temporarily, will remove the cap, then all bets are off for 2010.

And you will soon see an NFL unlike any we have witnessed in two decades of parity-driven peace and tranquility.