The clock is ticking. It is a quarter to insanity now . . . 10 minutes to chaos . . . 5 minutes to greed . . . then the clock strikes “madnight.”
Not midnight. Madnight — when reason takes a holiday and the National Football League will becomes the No Football League for no one knows how long during the National Foolish Lockout.
Only because the billionaire owners and the millionaire players could not figure out a way to divide the pie and instead smash it in the faces of fans addicted to their game enough to break their own banks to pay for those shameless PSLs.
Stop the Clock, Commissioner Goodell.
Don’t do this to us!
If the NFL truly cares about us, at 11:59 tonight it will extend the negotiation beyond the deadline and allow the mediation process to give peace a chance and keep hope alive for an NFL as we know it and love it.
Even if it is fourth-and-very-long.
I won’t bore you with a long regurgitation of the key issues. In a nutshell: The owners cry they need to change the business model — their way of demanding the players take a smaller cut of the pie so new stadiums can bloom — so they can grow that delicious pie they have been gorging on. The players like the size of the current pie and scream that it would be folly to knuckle under unless and until the owners show them the books, which will happen on the 12th of Never, because there is no trust in the room.
The owners’ desire for an 18-game season should be scrapped. The players do not want it, their careers are short enough as it is, end of story. Cut the prices of preseason games, for crying out loud. Shame on them if they can’t find a way to agree on an equitable rookie wage scale, and funnel the monies that have gone to the JaMarcus Russells and Ryan Leafs to the battered retired players who need and deserve it.
At some point, the owners and the players again will see the light and recognize they are partners rather than adversaries, so it might as well be now.
At some point, Roger Goodell and union heads DeMaurice Smith and Kevin Mawae mercifully will throw a penalty flag on all the helmet-to-helmet hits they have rained on one another, so it might as well be now.
Unfortunately, we need a Hail Mary — or a Hail Mara — for it to be now.
We need the Boys of Bummer to change their mindset from Immaculate Deceptive to Immaculate Receptive for it to be now.
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . one minute to America Held Hostage.
I believe, to a large degree, that it is our magnificent obsession with the NFL that emboldens Goodell and the billionaires to move unflinchingly toward calling a timeout on the 2011 season.
We are lemmings, and they know it. The NFL says jump, we ask how high?
If they play it, we will come.
If they play it, we will watch.
If they play it, we will bet.
If they play it, we will buy their jerseys and their merchandise.
If they play it, we will play fantasy football.
Professional football is entrenched as the national pastime, and will continue to be the national pastime.
But they should know that they are playing with fire by playing with our emotions like this.
The fans are the engine that has driven the NFL on the road to riches. Fathers and grandfathers, even mothers and grandmothers, are the ones who break their little banks to pay obscene prices — parking, concessions, tickets — to take their sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters to your games.
Go ahead and bite the hand that feeds you if you must. And then ask Major League Baseball about the potential consequences.
As the most powerful man in sports, Goodell needs to invoke overtime here.
It is time to Stop the Clock, Commissioner Goodell.
steve.serby@nypost.com