I think the problem is you and a lot of other fans took the UNCAPPED year headline to imply a boundry-less free for all based on the name only. The league was always going to have rules/fine print/limits on it. The league was fine with single year deals going sky high. But they were upfront warning teams not to dump dead money or weasel around long term cap hits. The Cowboys and Redskins absolutely did just that - it wasn't about their actual expenditures. They did not get "penalized" for what they did - the cap hits simply got put back on the books properly. No fines, no forfeited draft picks. Cap hits reinstated. The league knew you didn't want teams cutting players like mad (absorbing a then invisible accelerated cap hit) and signing new ones with massive first year balloon payments in place of signing bonuses (making the remainder of years virtually non-guaranteed with minimized cap implications). There was a real reason for the rules. The Roy Williams extension flew in the face of that. If there was truly a secretly agreed upon $123M cap, that's a completely different story.
But again, there was no "long term" cap at this point because there was no future CBA in place that had a cap. For all we know, the players could have refused to agree to a new cap and then there would have been no cap that any team was weaseling around. In order to penalize teams for getting around something, the NFL had to assume there was something to get around - and that's where the problem lies because that assumption, and the associated penalties, were done without the approval of the NFLPA. I agree with the principle here - but if the CBA itself didn't say there was anything wrong with doing this, then the league can't just say it's going to decide to penalize teams on its own for it. That injures the players and that's where the lawsuit comes from. The original mistake here was agreeing to an uncapped year for some idiotic reason - the reason the players agreed to this was likely because they knew the kind of benefits they would get from it. But then the league didn't like that and tried to make up new rules on it's own to avoid the consequences that were completely foreseeable when they agreed to the deal in the first place.
I believe the arbitrator ruled that the penalty itself was OK because it didn't take money out of the hands of players and instead redistributed it through higher caps for other teams. But that really doesn't address the issue of whether there was damage done by the collusion itself. That had the potential effect of preventing contracts being signed in the first place by other teams thanks to the threat of penalties.
Yes all contracts require league approval. That was the basis for the appeal by Cowboys and Redskins. The frontloaded contracts were approved by the league offices.
This is not true at all. There was no fine print that was not followed and no collectively bargained rules were broken when the contracts were frontloaded. All contracts were sent to the league office for approval and were in fact approved by the NFL. This is exactly why the Cowboys and Redskins appealed the penalties. No type of salery cap restrictions may be placed on contracts with out a collective bargaining process or you have collusion. The fact that the owners got together and created some rules in the form of a gentlemans handshake or a memo does not make it legal, it makes it collusion.
http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/cowboys/post/_/id/4691171/mara-redskins-cowboys-got-off-lucky Quote by John Mara of the New York Giants That is a pretty damning statement from one of the league owners.
I thought so, but seems ridiculous they wouldn't have just denied the contracts back then. Makes no sense. I know the NHL has vetoed contracts signed before, so it certainly isn't unprecedented among the major sports leagues.
I'm not sure they had a basis for denying the contracts since they did nothing to violate the CBA, and whatever informal agreement they came to had no real validity. Rejecting those contracts would have caused the NFLPA to throw a fit and made their upcoming negotiations that much more contentious. Easier to just allow it and throw out some penalties after the new CBA was in place - especially if they could get the NFLPA to agree to some sort of "forgive anything that might have been done wrong" clause.
This is a dead on post. The owners getting together and creating rules for contracts that are not collectively bargained is collusion by definition. The players had collectively bargained for an uncapped year and they should have been allowed to reap the benefits of that year. Players should have been able to negotiate massive extensions to get upfront cash. Most teams wouldn't do it (the Texans operated like they were under the cap still and said they were going to do so) in a concerted effort to hold prices down and avoid there being a boon to the players without a cap. Who can forget the owners making the media blitz about how the uncapped year was going to hurt the players?
The players would still get the same money at the same time, just the cap effect would have been different. Edit: Not that I really know what is in the CBA. I just know the NHL incidents were attempts by teams to circumvent the cap by spreading the contract out across a ton of years.
But if the money is credited against the future cap, then that means less new signings the following years. For example, if you have 2 years: one uncapped and one with a $100 cap, a non-penalized team could spend: $200 in yr 1, $100 in yr 2 = $300 total to the players A penalized team that spends $200 in yr 1 might have zero cap room the next year, and thus = $200 total to the players
Major listed a good example here is another. It's an uncapped year. A team wants to resign a player in such a way that it loads up that up front year, so they structure it to where he gets an extra $5 million in year one vs having it spread out over base salaries for 5 years. Because of owner collusion, the teams can't do this, so instead of getting that $5 million up front it ends up being spread out. He gets cut and now he loses out on some of that money that would have been a signing bonus had the team structured that way in the uncapped year. There's no way around it. Putting rules on the uncapped year created an artificial way to hold down spending. Teams couldn't really spend like there was no cap because the owners agreed not to let contracts be structured to take advantage of the lack of a cap.
He would still get the money. Signing bonuses are paid to the player upfront, and generally guaranteed. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Major is certainly right that it would have decreased amounts available in future years.
Most likely there was collusion. NFL's only hopes are if the evidence just isn't solid enough to stand in court or if NFL can argue that the talk about "fining" teams was related to CBA negotiations and how they would implement capped years with new CBA.
I'm thinking the NFLPA should win. The NFL argument is that the CBA says all litigation is settled, but the PA says they can't agree to something they were unaware of at the time.
the NFL's worst enemy is itself. So much money leads to so much greed. It will lead to the demise of the sport if these issues aren't rectified.
Not true. If an owner has to spread out the money over capped years then he is less likely to give as big of a contract to a player. If an owner can front load the contract in a non-salery cap year he can pay player a lot more money by front loading the contract. Rules to prevent front loading contracts in a non-salary cap season absolutely influences the amount of money a team will pay a player over the course of that contract. It's collusion.
I think this is exactly what the argument is going to be and I think the owners are going to hate that John Marra ever started this crusade.
John Mara is the head of the management executive committee. That's the body that issued the penalties to Dallas and Washington. John Mara is the one who specifically rallied the committee to issue the fines and he did so with out the knowledge of Jerry Jones who also sits on the committee. I don't think Dan Snyder is on the committee. John Mara's comments are full of aragance clearly thinking that the signing of the new CBA insulates him and the league from any collusion law suit from the NFLPA. I guess we are about to find out if he is right. I have not read any other comments from any other owners except for Jones and Snyder who both said they did not break any rules. I'm guessing John Mara has already had a couple of confrontations with his fellow owners behind closed doors for putting the league in a position to be sued for over a billion dollars.
