No football?

There are three letters that are scaring the life out of me: C. B. A. Like something out of a Stephen King horror, there is the looming possibility that the 2011-2012 NFL season may be brutally murdered.
The NFL Player's Association and the NFL owners have yet to agree on a deal for how much money each side makes and how many games a season will be (among other things) in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The two sides have until March 3 to come to an agreement. However, the sides have reportedly had 9 hour meetings as recently as Tuesday the 8th with little to no progress at all. Basically, it's millionaires who have their brains beaten in for a living, whose average career is about 2 years and also have few retirement benefits against the greedy, billionaire owners who want to extend the season, charge higher prices for tickets, get replay boards for the stadium which interfere with the actual game and manage to displace 400 fans for the Super Bowl in an attempt to break the all-time attendance record.
Ok, so maybe you figured that I empathize with the players a bit more than the owners. At the end of the day, it's millionaires versus billionaires and each side is asking for a larger cut of the league's profits. The most frightening thing is that both sides are also willing to compromise the season itself for this money (which we the fans will be paying for in the end). As a matter of fact, only two parties will suffer in the end, and neither have a say in this clash for cash.
The first would obviously be the fans. Although fans have no true say in how the enterprise (the NFL) is ran, each fan is essentially a stock holder and invests in each team and the league as a whole. If this C.B.A. agreement isn't reached, the season may be lost. Fans will be dissapointed and all will seem lost.
However, it will not be like the strike shortened '94 season in the MLB, which in my opinion has dropped the MLB behind the NBA in sport popularity. Why? The NFL is too damn popular, period.
I see it like this: the MLB is, say, Jennifer Aniston, who you love. Say she cheats on you. Down the road, while you're in a relationship with another girl, Jennifer wants a second chance. You think about giving her the chance, but she ripped your heart out, and for a time you never thought you could love again.
Now, the NFL is Brooklyn Decker. She is hot beyond belief, you love her and honestly spend time wondering why the heck she's even with you. Then she cheats on you and you're devastated. Some time passes and you're in this intimate relationship with another woman. All of a sudden, Brooklyn wants you back! You don't think twice, you drop this new girl like a hot tamale and sprint back to Ms. Decker! Point is, the fans will eventually recover from a year without football.
The other side to the equation are the thousands of people whose entire livelihood depends on the NFL. Beer vendors, broadcasters, cameramen, (by the way cheerleaders are all volunteers), team physicians, athletic trainers chain gang men and any others I may have missed depend entirely on the NFL having games to make a decent living. The NFLPA and owners must realize that while they are scuffling over what is essentially chump change to them, the real people behind the scenes in the NFL are losing their entire livelihood.