Quote:
Originally Posted by FRPLG
I don't think it is as clear cut as you believe it is. In this case the owners were certainly trying to impede teams from freeing future cap space as you have stated. Opening up cap space for future years allows a team to spend more money. By trying to create a virtual cap at the time to inhibit future cap gains they are necessarily depressing future salaries.
Did they have other reasons to desire such limits? Sure, keeping the franchise tag prices down and so forth...all of the reasons involve depressing future monies spent though. They just do.
I strongly believe that what the league attempted to do was collusive. At the very least it is something that would have been a very major issue during labor negotiations. The fact that the league both allowed the contracts at the time and never publicly discussed limiting such actions is a great indication that the league was quite concerned that the tactic the were employing was questionable. If you have a better explanation as to why they contracts were approved even though they were deemed undesirable for the league then I'd love to hear it.
|
You could make that argument if the 2006 CBA didn't have multiple clauses intended to keep clubs from shifting too much cap hit into a potential uncapped year. The League and the NFLPA foresaw an uncapped year, what it meant, and how it should be handled. There were clauses governing how much cap hit could be shifted from earlier years into an uncapped year and clauses governing how much cap hit could be shifted from a future year into the final uncapped year.
They didn't foresee people writing in void clauses with massive payback amounts that would never be exercised, just so they could call the voidable years "under player control".
It's not collusion if the NFLPA clearly agreed to the principle.