Musings on the Salary Cap

As I sat at the bar last night, eating my cheeseburger and watching a string of Yankee bruisers step to the plate and clobber the heck out of the Red Sox, three thoughts continued to run through my mind:

- the pub is more fun when my wife’s in town
- soggy jalapenos are worthless
- thank God the NFL has a hard salary cap

What was the final score of last night’s game? I left at the bottom of the 6th with New York batting, no outs, and up 6-1.

(okay, just checked USA Today…final score was 6-2; guess I saw most of the damage)

For two or three innings it really seemed I was watching a line of clones, as successive large men struggling to look thin in pin stripes (and horribly failing), continued to chop mercilessly at Boston’s pitchers.

Not that I don’t love to hate the Yankees (like everyone), but I am more than satisfied with the way the salary cap has increased parity in the NFL. Instead of hating whole teams we can now single out individual players for enmity: like Tom Brady and Terrell Owens, for example.

The only downside to the implementation of the NFL’s 1994 salary cap appears to be the way players so rarely end up finishing their careers on the same team. The days of Steve Largent playing an entire 13 year career for the Seahawks would appear to be over.

Or is it?

Actually, the salary cap appears to have been more a response to the development of free agency in the NFL than anything else. Prior to 1989, if a team tried to “steal” a veteran from another team (by offering a more lucrative contract), the NFL commissioner would “compensate” the team losing the player by taking something of “equivalent value” (usually draft picks) from the team signing the free agent and awarding it to the agent’s former team. This fairly arbitrary method of penalizing teams (called the “Rozelle Rule”) prevented most teams from even negotiating with players on other teams.

From 1989 to 1992, the NFL engaged in Plan B Free Agency, under which only 37 players from each team could be designated as subject to a reserve clause in their contract (i.e. the Rozelle Rule). However, due to anti-trust lawsuits, by 1993 the NFL had changed free agency to the form in which it exists today.

The implementing of a hard salary cap, along with a hard salary floor (minimum) and revenue sharing has allowed NFL teams to compete on a pretty darn even footing. In addition, it appears to have had some other side effects:

- teams have to be smarter about how they scout and draft players, paying more attention to issues of character and chemistry
- teams are less likely to keep “problem” players on pay-roll
- players have been forced to consider what is more important to them: consistency and team-building or going where the money is

There are still players that are finishing up their careers on the teams with which they have become associated. Brett Favre has continued to play with the Green Bay Packers since 1992, and is a fixture of the Pack as Vince Lombardi. DE Cortez Kennedy chose to retire a Seahawk in 2000 rather than take contract offers from other teams. Both Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith were allowed to sign contracts with their former teams (the 49ers and Cowboys respectively) at the end of their careers so that they could retire as members of their original team.

Teams also have their own methods of honoring players, whether it is retiring their jersey numbers or inducting them into a “Ring of Honor;” Dave Krieg was inducted into the Seahawks Ring of Honor despite playing nearly half of his 18 year career on other teams (of course, Krieg is among the most beloved of former Seahawk players).

I don’t think the salary cap prevents players from staying with their teams (though Lawyer Milloy might disagree) any more than free agency forces players to move. I have a strong suspicion that if free agency had been an option in the past, some players would have taken advantage of the opportunity…and others would not have. Would Jim Brown have played for a team other than Cleveland if free agency had been available? It’s certainly possible...and he may have ended up playing for more than nine years if there’d been a team that’d taken him after his dispute with Art Modell.

What does any of this have to do with astrology? Not much, really…unless you want to look at birth dates of NFL Commissioners.

Pete Rozelle (Commissioner 1960-1989) Pisces
Paul Tagliabue (Commissioner 1989-2006) Sagittarius

Pisces is all about encompassing the whole, “merging with the cosmos,” swimming in the big picture, and adapting to circumstance. Pisces is also extremely emotional, sentimental, and super empathetic. Any wonder that the NFL under Rozelle’s leadership merged with the AFL, glommed onto television, and encountered boundary issues (like “family fights” with Al Davis and other owners). In the chaos of the beginnings of what is now the modern NFL, Rozelle was the perfect adaptable commissioner to swim with the ebb and flow…but is it any wonder the salary cap and free agency issues were ill-defined?

Sagittarius on the other hand is all about expansion and freedom…but done so not for the sake of exploration alone as for the creation of new paradigms. Creation of more franchises, allowance of free movement (both players and teams), and ballooning of salaries would all be expected under a Sag commissioner. What’s more interesting is the creation of a salary cap (limits?!) and the restrictions associated with free agency under his leadership…but of course, the NFL is influenced by more than a single person and there still is a lot more freedom than in the past. Also, Sag is the sign that rules lawyers and organized religion…it’s all about the creation of a new big paradigm that gives a place to hang all those little bitty facts, rules, and dogma.

The current commissioner, Roger Goodell, is an Aquarius. Under his direction, I would expect to see some non-traditional, “outside the box” thinking (Aquarius is the genius/nutty professor sign). Goodell has begun discussing the possibility of expanding the NFL outside of the USA, which would be a first. Of course, Aquarius is an organizer more than an initiator, so Goodell might only lay the groundwork rather than actually give expansion teams to Toronto or Vancouver or something. He might simply organize some sort of “world championship” between teams from different national leagues (a “World Cup” of American football). Aquarius is also the sign that rules both television and computers; I’d expect to see more active NFL involvement in both under Goodell’s leadership (streaming NFL podcasts, etc.).

By contrast, the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, is a Big Leo. Commissioner since 1998 (“acting” Commish since 1992), Selig seems to have a lot of the stereotypical Leo archetype…i.e. the need to look good, the need to not look bad. A fixed, organizing sign (like Aquarius, Taurus, and Scorpio) Bud is not likely to implement much in the way of “changes” to the MLB, but appears ready to make whatever arrangements he can to draw attention/focus to it. Lots of strangeness has thus occurred under Selig’s watch: far too many to list here (though “tie” games and congressional hearings on steroids do stand out). But Selig has certainly managed to have his name remembered and associated with baseball (um…not necessarily the same as being a good Commissioner). Ah, fame.