Quote:
Originally Posted by SBXVII
and there in lies the problem. In any other situation whether its a lawyer or judge if there is any form of conflict of interest they politely back out and let someone else handle the case or issue. What are the conflicts in this case or issue...
1-Mara who heads up the committee is in the same division.
2-Mara only punished 2 teams and they are in his division.
3-Mara's team benifited from the two teams being hindered in FA.
4-Mara's team collected 1.6mill also.
If all the teams no matter how much they gained were punished it might look better. If all team who spent below the CAP floor were punished also then it would look more like the NFL trying to keep to their rules and regulations.
5-If the league is all about the NFL then they would have been more concerned with saving themselves $96-$224 mill dollars by not making the agreement with the NFLPA and simply allowing the CAP to drop 3-7mill per team. Thats 3-7mill X 32 teams. Instead they chose to over look the $96-$224 mill simply to punish the two teams at a whopping $46 mill total.
Apparently it was more important to save less money and punish the two teams vs. ignoring the two teams and saving $50+mill more.
Had the NFLPA not agreed to the punishment the league would not have punished for fear the NFLPA might file a collusion law suit and might have made the new CBA a viodable contract because of the collusion. In other words back to sqaure one with the negotiating. On top of that the NFLPA would could have won hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
|
1-4) Personally, I think it's coincidental that it's the Giants' owner that happened to run the relevant committee. Any other team owner is a competitor, and there's no way they appoint outsiders to every committee position.
5) The salary cap refers to the max teams can spend for competitive reasons. Actual cash spending is different (i.e. signing bonus counts as actual cash in year 1, but is prorated over the length of the contract for cap purposes).
Raising the cap the way they did won't cost other teams money in total. There's no obligation to spend it. If anything, it may raise the salary floor a little for some teams - but there aren't more than a couple teams bumping against the salary floor.
The only other obligation to spend money is that the 32 clubs as a whole have to average 99% of the salary cap as actual cash spending in 2012. Luckily for them, they have two teams that consistently spend actual cash above the salary cap every year and will make sure the League meets that obligation.
In the end, they wouldn't save any money long term by lowering the cap this year. The cap is made based on projected revenues for the upcoming year, and then actual payments to players are adjusted based on actual revenue afterwards. Whether they set the cap at $116m or $121m, they'll still have to pay out the same in the long run. If they accidentally overpay now, there's a downwards adjustment in the future.