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The National Football League's 32 owners are hurtling toward a March 4 deadline, giving every indication that they plan to lock out the players and stadium employees, potentially jeopardizing the next season in an effort to extract an extra billion dollars per year for themselves and require the players to put in two extra regular season games.

The owner of the Cincinnati Bengals, for instance, is insisting that he needs the extra money from the players to maintain the team's stadium. "The investments that need to be made to keep the stadium and our other facilities in first-class condition require an economic system that fairly allocates financial reward and risk," said Bengals owner Mike Brown in an October letter explaining the team's position to progressive advocacy group Progress Illinois.

Problem is, the Bengals don't pay for those investments. The local taxpayers do. The stadium was entirely a gift from taxpayers to the team. The lease requires taxpayers to pay the costs of routine maintenance and upgrades, which amounted to $10.2 million over the past decade, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. And now the Bengals want four times as much from taxpayers for the next decade.

In a Tuesday op-ed, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who represents team owners, conceded that it is only the owners who are making demands, but tried to flip the situation upside down. He argued that the fact that players aren't making demands is evidence of owners' impoverished situation.

"The union has repeatedly said that it hasn't asked for anything more and literally wants to continue playing under the existing agreement. That clearly indicates the deal has moved too far in favor of one side," Goodell wrote.

The owners have two key demands: They want an extra billion dollars of the roughly $9 billion revenue pie that is the NFL, and want an additional two regular season games. The owners say they need the extra billion for upkeep and "professional fees" for legal and other services (fees that would presumably go to cover owner lawsuits against the elderly who can no longer afford season tickets or small alternative newsweeklies that run articles critical of ownership).

The owners also want to limit pay to unproven rookies, many of whom just finished playing for free for four or five years for a lucrative college program. The players' union is willing to concede this, to an extent. But the average NFL career lasts only three-and-a-half years, meaning the owners want to take a big chunk from nearly a third of a player's typical career.