READY TO ROLL!

The Giants and Jets kick off the preseason tonight in Snoopy Bowl

The preseason begins tonight for much of the NFL, and somewhere at future CBA negotiations the owners will try to turn half of these preparation games into something more lucrative.

Expanding the regular-season NFL schedule to 18 games has reportedly been discussed by the owners after the 2020 season, when the current CBA expires. It’s not the first time (or the last time) the idea has been discussed, and presumably it calls for slashing the preseason schedule from four games to two.

According to the Wall Street Journal, two added weeks to the regular season will generate $2.5 billion in revenue for the NFL. For the owners, it has been labeled a linchpin issue to the next CBA. But the proposal was rejected last month by the player’s union, and one veteran explained to the Daily News that owners are only considering themselves.

“The people talking about 18 games obviously aren’t the people who are on the field,” Giants safety Antoine Bethea said. “It’s not affecting them. It’s not affecting their bodies. All it is affecting is their pockets in a positive way. So I don’t think they’re really thinking about the reaction it will have on the players. I think the setup we have now has been working. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I think where we’re at right now is cool, 16 games. We still have postseason. I think what we got going on now is good.”

Bethea, 35, is an anomaly in the NFL entering his 14th season. The average career of an NFL player is about 3.4 years, and the contracts — unlike in the NBA and MLB — are often non-guaranteed. Bethea, who was drafted in 2006, acknowledges luck played a role in his longevity and he picked up important health habits along the way, including lots of sleep.

“Getting those eight hours, get rejuvenated, that’s one of the biggest things that helped me,” Bethea said.

But football is a brutal, unforgiving sport to its participants. And the NFLPA estimates that two extra games per season would drop the average NFL career from 3.4 years to 2.8, according to the Washington Post.

With those concerns in mind, the owners added a wrinkle to their 18-game proposal (the one that was rejected) by placing a 16game cap on players. In other words, each player would be required to sit at least two games. That adds another layer of problems including the quality of play and necessity of expanding the roster.

Theoretically, the players would also benefit financially because they share revenue at a percentage split slightly favorable to the owners. But Bethea is skeptical that players would actually be rewarded.

“It sounds good,” he said. “But you know that won’t happen.” Giants coach Pat Shurmur played it down the middle.

“I don’t know. I think we play a lot of football. I’m not involved in those meetings,” he said. “The players, the owners and the NFLPA, they’ll get that figured out. It’s still 20 games in my mind. I obviously know that it means different things to different people. So we’ll just have to see it how it plays out.”

Shurmur noted that coaches have adapted to changes in the last CBA that placed restrictions on required practices.

“If we’re given two preseason games, we’ll get the team ready,” Shurmur said. “That’s what I would say. That’s really, over the years, how we’ve adjusted to the rules. At one point, there wasn’t an offseason that was quite as structured as it is now. Now with all of the structure, we’re still required to do our jobs in the amount of time that’s allotted, and be smart about how we train our guys. That’s really going to be my opinion regardless.”