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No Salary Cap


rizzy

No Salary Cap  

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  1. 1. Will no salary cap for the nfl be a good thing or bad thing?

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It won't be good for the cautious, cap conscious Bengals and other small market teams. I can't think of a scenario where it is a good thing for the Bengals, unfortunately, but who knows.

Right now can't imagine them signing a FA to more than a one or two year deal - someone like Sam Adams comes to mind.

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I will go with "not sure" for now. I don't believe the end of the cap would, in the long run, be particularly bad for the Bengals or ruinous to the sport.

Like I said a while back, there are some fundamental differences between baseball and football that would would work against "buying" a championship, including the smaller number of teams and, especially, the fewer games.

The end of the cap would also probably mean the end of bloated-signing-bonus deals. The whole signing bonus dodge was invented to get around the cap; that such bonuses were eventually ruled as "advances on salary" only emphasizes their status as a financial tool. Now -- and this would please the bengals front office hugely -- players can be paid for actual performance, without a danger that hitting some big incentive will send a team over the cap.

In short, there's a lot less gambling on the part of the owners. No more paying a guy -- like, say, Chad Pennington -- a bazillion dollars only to see him blow out his arm and screw your whole team because of the cap.

You would probably see a lot more long-term (like 10 or 12 year) contracts; these might be where signing bonuses would re-emerge (as true signing bonuses versus disguised salary advances) as incentives to sign away any chance at shopping yourself around.

In a gameday change, without a CBA, I'm not sure that the league would be able to enforce things like a roster limit or a limit on the number of guys active for a game. So we might get rid of all this IR and PUP and inactive stuff, which would probably be a net plus for fans.

The guys who get shafted in all this are the backups and bottom guys on the roster. There wouldn't be any minimum salaries any more (those are defined by the CBA) so they are the ones likely to get shortchanged.

How it all shakes out...like I said, I dunno yet. These are just some thoughts. But one thing that seems likely is this: the owners' profits will shoot up without a cap, a relatively few players will still get ridiculously rich, but most players will end up with less: less salary, no bennies, etc.

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Good Article from SI

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writ...l.qa/index.html

SI.com asked Peter King eight questions about the NFL's inability to complete the collective bargaining agreement as free agency rapidly approaches.

SI.com: Where do we stand on the NFL labor agreement as of right now?

KING: You got a glimpse of the future late Wednesday afternoon when Denver cut three players integral to its recent success: DL Trevor Pryce, RB Mike Anderson and TE Jeb Putzier. This is an obvious indication that the NFL isn't going to make a deal with the players because Denver had to trim significant money from its 2006 salary-cap figure. If the owners had been able to make a deal with the players, the cap number would have been about $10 million higher than it's going to be -- probably about $95 million. So Denver becomes first team to puts its cards on the table and show what the new reality in the NFL is going to be like without a collective-bargaining agreement.

SI.com: Why is there a potential $10 million difference in the 2006 salary-cap number?

KING: Because the players want approximately 60 percent of all football revenue. That includes luxury boxes, local TV and radio rights and heretofore other premium dollars that have not been shared. The league is offering about 56.2 percent of all football revenue. The $10 million difference is the approximate difference in what the NFL would be giving the players if the two sides could reach a new labor agreement.

SI.com: How did it get to this point?

KING: As the NFL had tremendous prosperity in the 1990s, the value of franchises rose dramatically. When Bob McNair paid approximately $800 million to field a new team and stadium in Houston, owners were giddy the value of franchises had skyrocketed that high. But the flip side of that bonanza is being felt now. When someone puts down $800 million to buy a team, he doesn't take it out of his wallet. he has to borrow a good deal of the money. So an owner like McNair, as well as several others who bought franchises recently, have had to work extremely hard to raise revenue aside from the ticket sales and television rights fees all teams share. McNair has to sell luxury suites and use that money to help pay his debt. So players see all this money coming into Houston and say we want a bigger piece of the pie. McNair says "Whoa, I have to pay this massive debt. We already share enough money with you." And that has been one of the big problems that just can't get solved: How much from the multi-millions for premium seating should players be able to get their hands on? The two sides just can't agree on a number.

SI.com: What do the next few days hold?

KING: You can expect the NFL to give its teams a 2006 salary-cap figure at some point late today or Thursday. There isn't a last-second deal with the players in place and I have little hope that there will be. I expect that figure to come in at around $95 million. Even though that will be a healthy increase over the 2005 of $85 million, it won't be enough to help teams who were counting on a significantly higher cap number for the year.

SI.com: Why should any of us really care about this?

KING: That's a good question. The 2006 season will be like every season we've had since the salary cap began in 1994. But the 2007 season will be an uncapped year, which means all players will have a chance to make more money than they would in a normal year. But the one thing that not enough fans are focusing on right now -- and I don't believe players are focusing on it either -- is that in this uncapped year, players will have to have six years of NFL service to become a free agent rather than the current four. That will limit the number of free agents out there significantly. The uncapped year won't be the bonanza that players might think.

SI.com: So no matter what, there's going to be football?

KING: Yes. I heard one radio host breathlessly say Wednesday, "The NFL is on the verge of financial catastrophe." Silly rhetoric. Yes, the NFL has been the model sports league since adopting free agency with a cap 12 years ago. But if there's no cap, life will go on and football will be played.

SI.com: Are you saying that the NFL is not going to become like baseball, with tremendous difference in teams' ability to put competitive teams on the field?

KING: That's exactly what I'm saying. In baseball, the Yankees can spend $210 million on players, while a team in its own division, Tampa Bay, spends about $35 million. In the NFL, even if Daniel Snyder takes in $300 million over the course of the year and buys up five premier free agents every year, even the teams at the bottom of the financial totem pole -- e.g., Buffalo, Jacksonville -- will have $160 to $170 million of gross revenue to play with. Obviously, it won't be as egalitarian a system as the one the league has now. And it won't be as good a system, but we're not headed for any sort of football Armageddon. And don't let anyone tell you differently.

SI.com: How will this affect free agency?

KING: Free agency kicks off at 12:01 a.m. EST on Friday. And if there isn't a new deal, it will severely limit the amount of money this year's free-agent crop can earn. Too many teams have to make drastic cuts simply to get to the cap number, never mind spending additional money on free agents. In other words, it's a very bad year for Shaun Alexander to be looking for a six-year, $50 million contract. As I wrote in Monday Morning QB this week, only four teams -- Minnesota, Cleveland, Arizona and Green Bay -- have more than $20 million to spend in free agency this year. And so those teams could be shopping at Neiman Marcus and paying Target prices.

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Someplace to poke around if you want to get an idea of just where the Bengals stand vs. the rest of the league is revenues and income and all that:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/30/Rank_1.html

This is page one, the Bengals are on page 2 of the table, since it's ranked by "value." Overall, the team is 24th in total revenues -- but the vast majority of teams in the league are +/- $20 million total revenues of the Bengals. In short, there are only a few "super teams" with giant revenues. Like King says in the Q&A rizzy posted, the "disparity" is nowhere near that of other sports.

The Bengals are also exceptionally well-positioned. They rank 5th in operating income, so Mikey has plenty of room to make a move in any given year if he wants to. They are also tied with several other teams around 10th for least debt.

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To say it's anything but bad it just crazy. No CBA = Strike in the coming years and no draft in 2008. How is that anywhere near good ??

I will say this again to Upshaw and all with their heads up their a$$--> :finger:

WHODEY !!!

If it was just for '07 it wouldn't be bad.

Most teams would have few UFA, plus an extra transistion tag they could use and there are other safe guards built in for '07.

If it went past '07 it would almost certainly be bad, very bad, as in MLB Bad, and Upshaw has said that if they every have a uncapped year they will never go back to a cap.

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As for Upshaw being the one with his head up his ass ...

I am not so sure about that.

In spite of all the talk about percentages, I get the feeling that the real problem is with revenue-sharing and that Upshaw is trying to have that issue settled within the new agreement.

It is just my guess, but I think that is what they are talking about when they say that Upshaw is "over-reaching" and is "way out of bounds", that sounds like they are talking about something more than just a few percentage points to me.

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In any case revenue-sharing should have been settled before they even sat down to work out the new CBA and it certainly needs to be settled now.

You can not have the cap number based on total revenue including ancillary income and at the same time have a much smaller number for actual shared revenue.

If you do that, you risk becoming like MLB even with your new agreement.

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IMO, the league should go a head and vote in the revenue-sharing and then work out a new CBA, and just let the 5 to 9 owners who don't like it take it to court if they so choose.

The court battle might end up being just about as bad for the league as the present problem is but at least it would make it clear just who it is that is putting their greed above the good of the game.

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Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder must be too happy cats, they are going to turn the NFL into the New York Yankees. Greedy Snyder couldn't buy a championship under a salary cap so why not go to his good buddy Gene 'Upyours' and come up with this horrible idea of 60% CBA.

I like how Peter King talked about the Houston owner having to pay big bucks for stadiums and such, what about us fans? I know I pay out the a$$ for NFL Sunday Ticket and how about all the fans paying for seat licenses- what nosense that is.

BTW, Tagiluble looked horrible on tv today, man that dude looks like he needs a nap!

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This will be bad for the NFL because it will eventually lead to a strike again.

However, Jones and Snyder can't turn the NFL into MLB. There are rules that prevent that.

The Bengals won't be hurt as badly as other teams like the Redskins. The Redskins have been trying to BUY a championship for years. They haven't learned that chemistry is everything. You can't just buy a player and throw him on the field with other players you buy and make a championship team. You need the oline solidarity. You need guys on the Dline and at linebacker who have learned to work together. You need the Peyton to Marvin or Carson to Chad connection.

The Bengals have continued, even in the era of free agency, to go after their own guys and show loyalty by paying Bengals players what they are worth in free agency. They will continue to do so.

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