The end may be in sight, NFL Lockout edition. Unless the owners screw it up, that is.

For the record, I’ve been optimistic the whole time:

As the longest work stoppage in NFL history reached the 100-day marker on Thursday…

Sidebar: this isn’t the “longest work stoppage in NFL history.” They may have stopped all the front-office and offseason training-type stuff, but there’s been no delay or interruption in the product they produce. Football games. They produce football games, and they have yet to fail to do so.

Ergo: no stoppage. We continue:

…there were significant signals coming out of suburban Boston that the lockout could be reaching its final days.

Woot.

The reports that have leaked out of the ongoing contract talks between the owners and players are sounding as favorable as we’ve heard in the last few months. Instead of the angry saber rattling that characterized the early days of this lockout, the gloom and doom has been replaced with upbeat phrases like “heading in the right direction” and “very fruitful” and the all-important “close.”

Sometimes it’s dangerous to characterize the progress (or lack thereof) of ongoing negotiations. But from all the most knowledgeable conversations we’ve heard, a real breakthrough has happened and a season that once looked like it could be at risk is showing signs of life.

I say again: woot. Now for the pessimism:

The only way a deal doesn’t get done now is if somebody out there simply wants to pick a fight and send this lockout into a death spiral that will surely eat up games, profits and a ton of public goodwill.

It’s apparently a big-market owner vs. small-market owner dynamic going on now, dammit. Or, at least, that’s the speculation. And it is only speculation right now.

And it better stay that way.

Don’t make the cheerleaders cry, dammit.