Nice to have you back, NFL.
Now don’t desert us.
You toyed with our emotions, locked the players out, got gang-tackled in court, and finally, came to the only reasonable conclusion that preserves the dignity and integrity of your $9 billion sport — that Gordon Gekko was dead wrong, that greed is not good, that killing the golden goose is sheer folly.
The NFL fumbled … and recovered.
For now.
Play ball!
For good.
Because now that you are back in business, stay back in business.
There must be no turning back now. Please!
Fourth-and-long for labor peace in our time must now become first-and-goal. At all costs. Place all your lawyers on injured reserve immediately.
No one has to remind Yogi Berra that with your appeal to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals still pending, that it ain’t over till it’s over.
Declare it over. Even if you believe you may not have to complete a Hail Mary in a more hospitable courtroom to score your touchdown that won’t count in the court of public opinion.
It would be a pyrrhic victory for you, because you would risk losing the trust of the very fans who have made the NFL the gold standard, in every way, of professional sports leagues. The very fans who have made your sport the national pastime.
It would be the cruelest of teases, opening the doors of your 32 club headquarters, letting us watch Rex Ryan greet Mark Sanchez with a big hug and make another Super Bowl guarantee, or a smiling Tom Coughlin hand a playbook back to Eli Manning, etc., then as training camp approaches, call a reverse and make an absolute mockery of the notion that the players are your partners.
One delay of game is one too many.
You cannot let free agency begin — albeit awkwardly, after the draft — then stop the music and leave everyone standing in the dark with no chair on which to sit.
If this all is a sham, if this is simply a contempt-of-court stiff-arm whose endgame remains bringing the players to their knees in the name of growing the game, then allow me to remind you that there is no way to grow your game without us, the fans.
Your already strapped season-ticket holders deserve to know that in return for the checks they are asked to send in advance for you to deposit in your coffers, there will be a football season, on time, as they know it.
Do you really want to play with fire? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put out the fires of acrimony that moved the union to push away from the negotiating table and decertify once it determined that its pleas to “Let us play” were destined to fall on deaf ears?
So the SUVs pull into parking lots today. The doors are open and large men in shorts and sweatsuits are greeted warmly by general managers, coaches, administrative staffers, trainers, equipment managers, maybe even their owners, then plod gleefully into their long lost weight rooms, and the sweet sound of weights clanging fill the air inside places such as the Timex Performance Center and the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center.
GMs around the league are recharging their cell phones and getting their recruiting pitches ready for the start of free agency, presumably Monday. Free agents and agents soon will be planning visits once the NFL Draft is over, if not sooner. Head coaches are fine-tuning their minicamp and organizaed team activity schedules. Medical staffs are gearing up to treat rehabbing players.
No one has any interest in watching an angry DeMaurice Smith at a press conference. No one wants to read an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
It must now only be about Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning and Tom Brady throwing passes to teammates. Hakeem Nicks catching passes from Eli Manning. Darrelle Revis intercepting passes. Clay Matthews, blond locks flowing out of the back of his helmet, relentlessly chasing somebody, anybody. Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson running with the football. Bill Belichick in his hoodie. Ryan regaling the media.
Goodell is not wrong when he tells us that the game needs to grow, because it always needs to grow. But the time has come to lock out the lawyers and heal the wounds and build a trust and cut a deal with the players. Because at the end of the day, there is no game to grow if there is no game.
steve.serby@nypost.com