The ending last year was sweet and sentimental, or at least as sweet and sentimental as it gets for a sports entertainment colossus.
Who didn't love the inspirational story of the New Orleans Saints, a franchise that had never won anything, that had been nearly always awful, and that when it mattered most, provided symbolic uplift for a city of romance and art and beauty torn apart by mother nature and left to die by its own government?
That Super Bowl victory - and the fantastic NFC championship game that preceded it, in which the Saints overcame the Minnesota Vikings and Brett Favre, the ageless wonder from nearby Kiln, Miss. - had a pure storybook quality beyond even the imaginative powers of the propaganda meisters at NFL Films.
Thursday night, the Saints and the Vikes are back at it, providing the curtain-raiser for a season that will end with a championship game played in Jerry Jones's new Dallas showplace. No doubt many an eye will mist over when Drew Brees and company take the field at the Louisiana Superdome.
But this year, the subtext of the coming NFL season is anything but heart-warming. If what happened this past February was almost enough to make you forget the bottom line, the next 12 months - and perhaps more - are going to make it nearly impossible to suspend disbelief.
A reasonable person might wonder: How can it be that the biggest, most successful professional sports business on the planet, the first to catch and fully exploit the wave of television and then to benefit from a bit of enlightened socialism in divvying up the proceeds, one that now generates an astounding $9-billion in annual revenue, is even considering barring its doors because of a labour dispute?
Well, for the usual reason when it comes to wars between leagues and players.
No, not runaway salaries, or competitive imbalances, or the need to artificially contain the free market for talent, or impending financial ruin.
There is some minor slippage apparent when it comes to the NFL business model - ticket sales across the board are off slightly - but there's no looming economic or competitive crisis.
Rather, the problem that the owners are trying to solve is that some of them are better off than others. Some enjoy the benefit of enormous equity (having purchased their franchises in ancient times) but middling cash flow in aging stadiums that they can't afford to replace. If revenues rise elsewhere - and drive up player salaries in the process - it actually makes their lives more difficult.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who have invested and borrowed heavily, both to buy teams and to build state-of-the-art facilities, and don't really want to share in the new wealth they've taken big risks to create - not just with the players, but with their brother owners.
Once upon a time, the equally shared network television revenues patched over those disparities, but that's the case no more - as Ralph Wilson has been happy to tell anyone prepared to listen. So the solution is to drive down player compensation, if necessary by force.
The athletes in the NFL are well paid, as they ought to be, given the interest in the sport, given the physical damage they endure, given the fact that their careers are short and their contracts aren't guaranteed.
But now, in order to avoid a lockout, they are being asked to take a smaller percentage of a smaller pie, to play two extra regular-season games each year, and to accept a rookie salary cap (veterans tend to find that last one a relatively easy concession to make), on the promise that the business will be healthier, more money will flow, and everyone will be better off in the long run. And they are being asked to do all of the above without being allowed to see the books of individual teams.
Not shockingly, the NFL Players' Association, an outfit that is hardly battle hardened, that isn't known for its militancy, that was the one pro sports union defeated by the use of "replacement" players, has so far said no.
But the betting is that the players will eventually be battered into submission, even if it means a year from now, the football-loving public is contemplating a truncated - or cancelled - season.
A whole lot harder, then, to make believe.