In A Perfect NFL World.....

For smaller market teams have a luxury tax plus they are splitting the TV money dont let GreenBay fool you they are making lots of cash they have a nationwide fan base. Who cares if the /giants have all the T.O.'s that would help make player development more important and you could stack your rosters with good talent at a reasonable price. Keeping team continuity making the NFL a game based on being on a good team rather than just having good players. Stars will be made by play and teams will decide if they want to pay what the star is asking or not. right now there is a situation where mid level talent is eked out leaving team with a few BIG names and bunch of special team players the having someone ready to take your job and playing just as good as you will knock down some of this ego mess..

At the end of the day without a true free market then anything anyone comes up with is going to be imperfect based on what we all are desiring. It is why a free market works...there are no false market pressures changing the evironment. The problem is that leagues look at themselves as the "company" and not the teams. We all see the teams as the companies rather than the league. To create a real free market the teams would have to operate independent of each other which would mean some teams would fail and some would suceed(financially). The league is never going to let some of its teams fail when they view them as part of the overall product. I am all for a free market but sports should NOT BE a free market based on that thoery of thought. By nature of the corporate structure of sports it makes no sense for teams to compete at a labor level when it can destroy to product. Of course I also feel for players who have no say in where and who they work for. I don't know if there is any good answer to all of this other than to simply say that the league ought to be able to dictate it's own hiring practices at a league level since the company is the league(theoretically) and not the teams. But that seems totally unfiar to me at the player level. Who knows... Anyways there is no good solution. Anything anyone comes up with will simply create different problems that we may or may not be able to see right now.

I will say that the current system seems to have been working so why change it? The NFL is more poular than ever and parity is rampant. We may not like certain things that go on but we all keep going back. It is certainly better than the situation in baseball.

true that's true people like Terrell Owens got the eagles in a bind because they cant cut him and he knows this. Maybe readjusting the cap we have can work or something?

Joetheismanfan:

I think you and I are kind of saying the samething, at least by how I am interpreting it. The only thing I am unclear on is, I had always felt that it was the contract that tied the team and the player together, and not so much a salary cap. I mean, going by what a contract is, a binding agreement, regardless of a presence or absense of a salary cap the team could not simply cut a player unless there was some language in that contract that said the team held the right to cut a player if he chose not to honor his side of the agreement.

With that said, with or without a cap, I woudn't believe a team could cut a player and not have to still pay him the remainder of his guaranteed money of his contract. I could be wrong on that, but I had just assumed that the salary cap was nothing more than a budget that each team could not exceed each season.

True, I think every policy put in place is going to have its pros and cons, but the way things are going right now, I see this agent stuff as being too much of a distraction among players and teams. It henders teams preparations during the offseason - which can in turn have an effect on the team's performance during the season.

But...all really I am concerned with is teams getting the most out of the players they pay for - not so much handicapping the player's finances long term.

I am concerned with teams having to make this delicate balance with this salary cap and then bam some T.O. comes along and knocks the house of cards down. Maybe restructure contracts so they get paid by the day if you not here this day thats another 10 g's gone.. wanna go to the U miss three weeks let's see that will be 300,000 in checks you just missed. if you here you get paid if you not here you dont get paid. I guess i agree skins guy incentive based would work better. but i hate not being able to let Coles go without an 8 million dollar cap hit.

I am concerned with teams having to make this delicate balance with this salary cap and then bam some T.O. comes along and knocks the house of cards down. Maybe restructure contracts so they get paid by the day if you not here this day thats another 10 g's gone.. wanna go to the U miss three weeks let's see that will be 300,000 in checks you just missed. if you here you get paid if you not here you dont get paid. I guess i agree skins guy incentive based would work better. but i hate not being able to let Coles go without an 8 million dollar cap hit.


I agree 100% with you! That's why I say, just get rid of the salary cap altogether. I haven't really seen it to be THAT great - it only handicaps teams that have the money to pay the players. I mean, I don't really think of teams in terms of big market and small market teams. They all have the opportunity to make money through merchandising, sell of tickets, etc... why punish the teams that appear to make more money?

Dont' get me wrong, I'm all for making the NFL as competitive as possible - which is why I had suggested a probation period for rookies. They still have opportunities to improve their pay through their play in the probation period, and the teams will benefit from these rookies' efforts. Now, I am in no way suggesting that rookies who have big contracts don't put forth the effort - but I hear so many times of players not "living up to the contract." This would only ensure the player is worth what he gives to the team. I don't see this as necessarily a richer team having the advantage over teams that aren't as rich. If that was an issue, then as what others have suggested and I agree with would be to set a cap on the salary of the player. However, getting the player's union to agree with that would be like me getting the opportunity to date Natile Portman! :)

Someone forgot in a perfect world the Skins would have won the last 5 superbowls.

I would love to see a Rookie Mandatory Salary for at least 2 seasons. So this way the youngsters get into camp & actually learn & then earn.

Someone forgot in a perfect world the Skins would have won the last 5 superbowls.


LOL!!!! How could we have overlooked that? And each year - we blew out the Cowboys in the NFC Championship game 56 - 0! :food-smil