Redskins, Cowboys could go “nuclear” over cap mess

[SBXVII]

Originally Posted by HoopheadVII

Or, if the Commissioner has broad powers to discipline teams for vague reasons, you warn people in advance that:

• An Uncapped year means you can spend as much as you want
• An Uncapped year does not mean you can "hit delete" on bad contracts by shifting all the future salary cap hit into the uncapped year
• We have written provisions into the CBA towards this effect
• It's impractical to try to think of every possible case in advance, but be advised I will view attempts to circumvent this as adversely affecting competitive balance
• I will discipline teams accordingly if necessary

In my opinion, the Skins played with fire and got burned. Where I have a problem is with the punishment. It was two years late, it came out of nowhere, it was laid down right before free agency, it appears to be based on other owners either whining or ganging up, there's been no chance for the owners involved to be heard, it's a bad use of any political capital the League ever had with the NFLPA, and it's generally been handled poorly.

If I had to guess, I'd guess the Commissioner wasn't going to act, but a bunch of other owners whined so much he had to. That's why he didn't disapprove the contracts within the 10-day window, that's why he let Mara (an owner) take front and center with it until he started saying dumb things, and that's why it came down at the last minute - right before free agency.

The whole process looks like something done by a committee of angry people trying to work something out, rather than by a sigle strong, rational, savvy leader. Whatever you think of him, Goodell has been strong, rational, serious, and has stayed clearly within his authority on other punishments besides this one.

Personally I kinda got the impression that the league warned about a specific issue. The Redskins and Cowboys chose to do what they did and reworked contracts because it was not what the warning was referencing. After the fact Goodell decides to take it to the Exec Committee to see if something should and could be done about what the two teams did.

It was my understanding the whole arguement the two teams have is that what they did was not warned against doing. However after the fact Goodell wants to some how twist the warning to fit what the two teams did do. This is why I think we will win along with the fact the league did not have issue's with the contracts when they had the opportunity to. Had the league done what ever they do.... deny, veto, decline, whatever and sent the contracts back to the two teams and told them "per our agreement you can't do this" there would be no need for punishment. Instead they let the contracts happen, then get tied all up in the new CBA talks, and what ... 2 yrs later decide ... oh we don't like what you did here so ... we want to punish you. Thats wrong. Why the delay? They were not in constant talks with the NFLPA. The owners held meetings outside the CBA meetings. They could at any time have decided on a punishment.

I'll tell you why. I'm still sticking by the issue that the agreement the owners had between each other to keep costs down was collusion. They didn't want the NFLPA to find out cause it would have opened them up to a law suit. The league waited until after the new CBA was agreed upon, agreed to drop all rights of law suits, and only then did they pull in the NFLPA Rep and remind him of his dropped rights and to put icing on the cake they pointed out that they would conveniently keep the CAP for each team where it is if they agreed to the punishment. Black mail. To not agree meant a lower CAP for each team. The league was afraid of what the NFLPA woud do so they had to black mail/bribe them into not taking action.