Tagliabue, who turned 65 last November, agreed to stay on as commissioner primarily to get television and labor deals that reach into the next decade.

So these are his final deals.

TV, as always, wasn’t much of a problem — the NFL has been a best seller for almost 50 years now and it remains so. But labor was another matter, far more difficult than the other contract extensions because the players were asking for so much more that it forced the owners to finally take up the divisive issue of expanded revenue sharing.

Revenue sharing is really a simple concept.

For more last decade, the rich teams have been getting richer faster than the less rich. (There are no poor teams in the NFL).

They’ve done it by marketing everything from stadium signs and local radio to naming rights, something a team like Buffalo can’t do with a limited fan base squeezed into western New York state and southern Ontario — east and south are the Giants and Steelers, who have had fan bases there for decades.

The top five right now are New England, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington and Houston. They will have to contribute the most to the player pool in the new system, in which the top 15 moneymakers pay extra on a sliding scale and the bottom 17 don’t.

They are also the ones who could have spent the most in an uncapped 2007 — along with the New York teams and a few others — creating the potential for imbalance on the field that’s most obvious in baseball, where the powers change little from season to season.

Tampa Bay’s Malcolm Glazer can attest to that — he is the majority owner of Manchester United in English soccer’s Premier League, where the same three or four teams, including Man U, are at the top every year because they simply outspend the other 16 for international stars.

So Tagliabue involved the big-money teams in making the settlement, ensuring that they wouldn’t vote against it.

The owners started with two proposals, one from New England and the Jets, the second from the Steelers and Ravens, a little lower on the scale. Then the commissioner got Bowlen, Richardson and Mara involved — all of them, “league” men who traditionally look out for the good of the NFL as much as they do for their own teams.

Finally, Jones and Atlanta’s Arthur Blank were brought in for a few tweaks along with Rich McKay, the Falcons’ general manager and the Steelers Dan Rooney. Rooney, who assumed Wellington Mara’s spot as the NFL’s conscience, and has been a dealmaker in past labor disputes.

So even if Wellington Mara wasn’t there, Tagliabue was able to use a group of owners with different views to come up with an agreement for Irsay and the lesser money makers.

Make the “ghosts of St. Wellington” three men: John Mara, the direct heir; Dan Rooney, the symbolic one, and ...

The man who always has been viewed as the polar opposite of Wellington Mara ...

Jerry Jones.

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