Results 13 to 24 of 74
Thread: If the NFL were uncapped...?
-
03-05-2013, 12:10 PM #13
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
Count me amongst those who are very glad the NFL has a salary cap. It's far from perfect, but still a much, much better situation than MLB. Picture a world where buffoons like Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder could simply buy Lombardis like a football version of George Steinbrenner. The salary cap may give many teams headaches, particularly in this dawning era of super-high priced QB's, but it's certainly preferable to the alternative.
-
03-05-2013, 12:12 PM #14Legendary RSR Poster
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
- Location
- Houston, TX Y'all
- Posts
- 34,414
-
03-05-2013, 12:31 PM #15Pro Bowl Poster
- Join Date
- Nov 2012
- Posts
- 2,074
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
Interesting concept. I think the NFLPA would go for it because it doesn't hurt players earning ability or escalating salaries. But I think some owners might not go for it because those organizations that don't draft well now would wind up even worse. At least now they have a shot at guys like Kruger, Ellerbe, or past players like Scott & Thomas. Guys who have outplayed their teams ability to keep them under the cap. But in that scenario, if the Ravens keep Kruger by paying him $10mil, but only counting a lower amount against the cap, it hurts bad teams from improving through free agency. Another team might have to pay even more overmarket for Kruger to lure him away - maybe $12 mil. Plus think about how much below the cap the Ravens would currently be - Flacco, Rice, Ngata, Suggs, Reed, Yanda, Webb would all have a lower cap hit than they currently do since they were extended after being drafted.
Basically, as a Ravens fan I say - this would be great! As a Chiefs, Browns, Bills etc fan I would scream NOOOOOO!!!!
-
03-05-2013, 12:47 PM #16
It's been proven that you can't buy championships in Pro sports. The Yankees failed, I remember them losing to the Marlins in the WS which the Marlins had one of the lowest pAyrolls. These dream teams are getting out of hand especially in Baseball and Basketball.
Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using TapatalkWE DON'T NEED YOUR RESPECT BUT WE WILL BEAT UP ON YOU AND TAKE YOUR SOUL!!!!!!!
-
03-05-2013, 12:52 PM #17Legendary RSR Poster
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
- Location
- Houston, TX Y'all
- Posts
- 34,414
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
True.
But it makes getting to the tournament WAY easier, thus your chances of winning it all are greatly improved.
Yes, it's been a while since the Yankees won it all, but they are constantly in the hunt, thanks to zero cap and an almost unlimited revenue stream allowing them to attract the top players.
There are plenty of other example in other pro sports -- Miami Heat, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Boston Red Sox, LA Lakers, etc. Yes, sometimes they falter and dont do well, but these teams are never down for long and can buy their way back to prominence.
-
03-05-2013, 12:54 PM #18Regular 1st Stringer
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
- Location
- Columbia, MD
- Posts
- 448
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
I think that the closest thing that you would get to this would be having max contracts like they have in the NBA. You could have a certain cap for a position on the open market, but make the cap for teams resigning their own guys a few mil higher per year.
But, I want people to realize that I wasn't saying that uncapped is the way to go. But I think that you could make a case that we would be middle of the road when it comes to spending. Obviously, the Redskins/Cowboys/Giants would dominate the spending, but we would be insulated due to our division. I think that the fact that we always spend up to our cap proves that we wouldn't be hurt by an uncapped system, as some teams fail to even come close to the cap.
-
03-05-2013, 01:03 PM #19Regular 1st Stringer
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
- Posts
- 128
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
It seems to me they could improve their drafting by putting more resources into talent evaluation and scouting which would most likely increase parity since teams would have to draft better and rely less on free agency. Also, a-hole owners who insist on not letting the football decisions to the football people would more penalized which is a good thing as they have the propensity to disillusion the fanbase.
-
03-05-2013, 01:08 PM #20Regular 1st Stringer
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
- Posts
- 493
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
In the long run, the Ravens would make out worse without a salary cap and a payroll floor. Worth keeping in mind is that Baltimore is only the 23rd or 24th designated market area in the country and we're hedged in by the Redskins, the Eagles, and the Steelers on all sides, so a lot of what should be solid secondary markets for us either are secondary markets for other teams, or are disputed turf where some people are Ravens fans and some people are fans of one or more other semi-local teams.
All that is mitigated somewhat by Baltimore having more football fans per capita (as best I can tell), and having a higher percentage of it's fan base than usual consist of hardcore fans who will watch every game, buy the merchandise, and attend the games if they can afford to. Maybe that takes us from a small market to medium or even above medium.
Still, though, in the end, if you make things a wild west in terms of revenue and spending, in the long run, the top spenders would be the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, and the Washington Redskins, among others (Imagine *that* free agent arms race). The AFC would benefit somewhat by not having those teams around, but I think the New England Patriots would have the potential to be huge spenders (ala the Boston Red Sox) and not keep having to rebuild with new supporting players around Brady, and even the relatively small market Steelers would benefit from merchandise revenue streams around the country presuming they'd keep them for themselves under the hypothetical system you propose.
To me, the hard salary cap and payroll floors are the best thing that's ever happened to the NFL. It's part of what makes it the premiere league in sports. Assuming decent management (Which of course varies), every team has a chance to win, and not only win, but keep their core players and not have them poached by other teams. Of course, sometimes that means the best teams have to select a handful of guys in their prime to pay and reload around them with younger and/or cheaper guys, but at least you don't see situations like what happens to the small market baseball teams like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that win where they often have to just unload everyone for financial reasons, or teams that just won't spend (*cough, cough* Angelos *cough, cough*- though he's getting a little better on that front.). You don't often see things in the NFL like the equivalent of Mike Mussina signing with the Yankees (Though a franchise tag is also a key thing that helps avoid those type of scenarios).
I mean, I legitimately don't think without a salary cap, we'd have been able to bring back Joe Flacco. What do you think the franchise tag numbers would be if the big revenue teams had been spending big these last few years? We'd have had no ability to tag (In terms of actually paying the $35m a year or whatever the top salaries had been driven up to), Flacco would have tested the open market, and he'd probably be playing for the New York Jets or something.
While it's true that you can't buy a championship, I do think that money can buy a big competitive advantage in sports like baseball that either have no salary caps or weak salary cap systems. For example, take the Yankees- yeah, they don't win rings as much as one would think with their payroll, but their payroll combined with decent management (and I really don't think it's stellar- just decent) puts them in the playoffs almost every year (and fewer teams make the baseball playoffs than football playoffs). Horrible management can screw anything up, and so much of what happens in the playoffs involves factors that are hard to predict, but I do think if you can put big money behind decent management you can be in the playoffs regularly whereas that same decent management with a low spending owner would put you near the bottom of the standings most years. Money also lets you keep your best players and not get them poached.
I agree with what most folks here have said- the NFL's hard salary cap and payroll floor are a model system. Baseball has the worst system for payroll of any of the four major sports. I would love to see baseball adopt the NFL system and have been calling for it for years.
-
03-05-2013, 01:23 PM #21Regular 1st Stringer
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
- Location
- Columbia, MD
- Posts
- 448
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
One thing to consider is that we are ranked as the 11th most valuable franchise by Forbes (and this was in September before we won our 2nd Super Bowl), and that revenues are already pretty well split among the teams. In baseball, the Yankees have a massive national TV station, while other teams struggle to get local deals, they sell out their 55,000+ stadium, while other teams struggle to bring in 15,000 at times.
In the NFL, all TV revenue is split, all merchandise revenue is split (it is in the MLB too BTW, sorry Yankee fans), and nearly every team sells out their stadium (and such a small amount of money comes from ticket sales).
I've heard economists say that there's about $10-15 million of marginal revenue to be made per year for each team. This means how much they could make from have a terrible team on the field and nickle and diming, short of a fan boycott, verses how much they could make if they really tried and put a winner on the field. Ergo, it's more about the owner's willingness to spend on the team, not really the market so much.
-
03-05-2013, 01:29 PM #22
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
I think it would be a lot harder to "buy" a great team in the NFL than it is in the MLB. In baseball, success from individual players is much more consistent from year to year. In football, players have shorter careers, more injuries, and more unpredictable declines.
-
03-05-2013, 02:08 PM #23
- Join Date
- Jan 2013
- Location
- Formerly Carpetbaggerville (IND) --now back in MD
- Posts
- 1,412
- Blog Entries
- 1
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
It would be one of the worst things to happen to the NFL. it's why a lot of the fun has been sucked out of MLB for me. Don't get me wrong --I was ecstatic to see the O's have the year they did last year especially as I can barely remember the last time they were good. But they really caught lightning in a bottle and had a LOT of breaks go their way. For teams like that it's an uphill struggle every year especially in big market divisions.
Granted we wouldn't necessarily be affected by big spenders in our own division but overall it would be counter productive to the growth and continued success of the league. And ESPN would probably become NFC East/Jets/Pats central with the other teams being basically rumors a la MLB.
The cap as it stands could use some tweaking but I am VERY happy that we do have one and don't want to consider the NFL landscape without it.
-
03-05-2013, 06:32 PM #24
Re: If the NFL were uncapped...?
Salary Cap and the rules that implement it, is football for nerds (lawyers, accountants, agents - number manipulators). So long as the contracts and their value is not guaranteed at signing, the value of long term contracts is barely worth the paper they are printed on. They are akin to a actor signing a contract for a movie and getting guaranteed a percentage of the 'net profits' of the movie and the producers and investors of the movie knowing they will NEVER let the movie have 'net profits' as their charges will suck down 110% of the gross profits.
NFL contracts are a shell game.
Bookmarks