The contracts handed to the draft class of 2008 may provide details of the battle between owners of high-revenue teams — which include Dallas’s Jerry Jones and Philadelphia’s Jeffrey Lurie, as well as New York’s Mara-Tisch families and Woody Johnson — and the bottom-feeders, such as Cincinnati’s Mike Brown and Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson, among others.

NFL owners can pull out of the present collective bargaining agreement with the players on November 8, and it appears that the owners are heading in that direction. The latest CBA has its roots in a court battle between the league and the players’ association, which was settled in 1993. It has one very important clause that kept labor peace for a decade and a half now: If the owners pull out of the CBA, there is no salary cap the final year of the agreement (which is in 2010). If the players pull out, players would only receive free agency after six years of service — not four.

The owners may offer significant clues in what their thinking might be in judging the sizes of signing bonuses and contracts handed to high-end players in the 2008 draft. For instance, up-front bonus money may be higher this year than normal. Or, the third year of a contract might be enormous, with year four being significantly less — if that fourth year falls on 2010, which could be a lockout or strike year as the CBA ends.

What has happened to the NFL brotherhood of owners, a group that believed in “Leaguethink,” an all-for-one attitude in sharing TV monies and stadium revenues that was important for the league’s financial survival for more than four decades? The high-revenue owners want to keep more of the locally raised monies and not share it with their poorer relations for a multitude of reasons.

The owners’ abandonment of “Leaguethink” had been a problem for a while, especially for former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and current head Roger Goodell, who now needs to find a workable solution for the 32 owners. Skyrocketing franchise values are making owners such as Robert McNair in Houston less worried about the needs of smaller-market teams: He needs every cent the team makes to pay off the debt of an estimated $700 million expansion fee that the NFL charged him for a team in Houston in 1999. Al Lerner paid $530 million for the Cleveland Browns expansion franchise in 1998. Contrast that with the $140 million Wayne Weaver and Jerry Richardson paid for expansion teams in Jacksonville, Fla., and in Charlotte, N.C., in 1993, and you can easily see why NFL owners are torn over revenue sharing, and why each team needs its own revenue more than ever.

How could a team need all its own revenue, though, if the NFL takes in billions? Television revenues have never been higher, as CBS, FOX, NBC, and ESPN, along with DirecTV, are lining the pockets of owners. There will be bidding for a new national radio deal after this season. An international contest in London on October 26 between the New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers will bring in even more money from global pockets. The Buffalo Bills franchise will be morphing into a Toronto-Buffalo regional team, with Canadian dollars flowing into Ralph Wilson’s pockets. There seems to be enough money around to satisfy the owners.

But banks like their loans to be repaid, and owners such as those in New Orleans and San Diego want new stadiums, meaning they need their own revenues to fall back on. Still, the NFL is heavily subsidizing Tom Benson’s operation in New Orleans, as is the state of Louisiana. Benson has three years left on his Superdome contract, which includes about $70 million in state aid. Alexander Spanos seems to not be getting too far in his quest to get a new facility in the San Diego area. The city has told Spanos to look elsewhere for a stadium as the city has no money for a football facility.

Jacksonville is struggling to keep up with other small-market NFL cities: The team just held an open house last Saturday, hoping to sell season tickets to reduce the chance of having to sell individual game tickets while having all of the team’s home games on local TV. Jacksonville public officials and business leaders are confident that they can keep the franchise in the northeastern Florida city, and that eventually, the demographics will suggest that Jacksonville is indeed a big-league city. But in the short term, it is uncertain that Jacksonville can compete with large and mid-sized NFL markets.

Southern California real estate developer Ed Roski is again going after an NFL team to fill the void in the Los Angeles market. Roski is willing to build a 75,000-seat stadium in the City of Industry with no public money, although there would be some type of public assistance. But last Wednesday, the California State Senate said no to the proposal, with the heavy hand of the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission behind the vote. The Coliseum Commission has felt for years that they are the only ones who should house an NFL team in the L.A. area.

Roski will not build the stadium until he has a commitment from an NFL owner to move. It is unlikely that any California state elected official will say yes to Roski if he goes after Spanos’ Chargers. But Weaver’s Jaguars and Benson’s Saints are fair game. San Francisco 49ers owners John and Denise York seem committed to Santa Clara, but if nothing happens there, they could also be thrown into the L.A. mix.

The NFL may be the king of sports in America. But figuring out how to divvy up the money that it brings in is threatening to undo more than 45 years of harmony among the owners, and could ultimately lead to a lockout in 2011. This year’s NFL draft may offer some clues as to what direction the 32 owners might take.