Is it health and safety worries keeping NFL owners and players up at night?
We can dream can't we?
Let's pretend for a few moments the NFL is able to fully navigate the minefield it currently faces due to the coronavirus and pull off a 2020 season.
Then let's assume we have a vaccine and treatments by the spring or summer of 2021, and the NFL can get back to normal next year.
Wouldn't that be great?
The problem, though, is the one thing few are talking about right now but which the owners and players are hyper-focused on: The public health crisis actually poses an even a greater risk to next season than it does to this one.
If the NFL owners are bound and determined to play this season they will.
Their Collective Bargaining Agreements guarantee them that ability.
At the end of the day, if the owners say, "We're open, come to work," players show up or their contracts can be terminated.
The owners and players are exchanging ideas to reach compromises that work best for everybody, but as you can tell from some of the louder complaints from players about safety, it isn't a negotiation, it's the players asking and the owners deciding what they'll do and what they won't.
Training camps will most likely open sometime not too long after Tuesday's target date, and the season will progress from there with some fits and starts and stops for as long as they can keep enough people healthy and safe to make it viable.
How long that is we'll just have to see.
Here is the much bigger issue.
We already know the annual hard salary cap the NFL's economics are all based on will guarantee the players somewhere between 47% and 48.5% of total football revenue next year, and while the percentages are fixed, the cap next year will be estimated off this year's gross.
We also know that even under the best of circumstances this year's games will be played in front of either empty stadiums, or best case to perhaps 25% of capacity.
A significant hit to total football revenue is guaranteed, and NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told us recently the current estimates suggest the cap could fall from $198 million per team this year to as low as $120 million next season as a result mainly of the lost game-day revenues.
The last time the cap was that low was 2011, the first year of the current 10-year deal. Since 2013, the cap has increased by at least $10 million per team every year.
Should this happen, every team in the league would be faced with cutting half or more of its roster just to get to the $120 million ceiling and still have no money left to sign free agents or draft choices for next season.
It would be pandemonium at best and more likely catastrophic for most players and the game itself.
But that's what the CBA says and it creates an incredibly powerful incentive for the owners and players to work something out now rather than later.
If we've learned anything about these owners we know they will find a way to eventually make back all their losses on the backs of the players and their fans.
Knowing that, the players have fired the first volley, suggesting a flat cap for next year to begin spreading the pain over a number of future seasons.
It's a start but will never fly with the owners. A drop or two on their beaks won't do it; they'll want them fully wetted.
You're going to be hearing all about the players' and management's safety concerns over the next few weeks but there are rules and reasonable moral obligations to guide those decisions.
What's really going on is while safety is paramount, these guys are really all trying to figure out how to steer the NFL through the next three or four seasons, not just the next three or four weeks or months without facing Armageddon.
It comes down to who is ultimately going to eat the lion's share of the financial pain and how quickly they'll have to chow down.
Twitter: @Hub_Arkush