Redskins, Cowboys could go “nuclear” over cap mess

[HoopheadVII]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

You keep repeating this point that there were rules in place that showed NFL and NFLPA agreement on this, but I think you are way way off base in this part. The mere fact of a bulleted list does not show broad agreement on a principle, instead it shows specific negotiated agreements probably worked out through a lot of horse trading. If both parties wantes to show general agreement there are two simple ways, probably more, that they could have done that. One would be to write a general policy statement that said something to the effect of " no contract shall be enacted in the an uncapped league year that is determined to violate a general competitve balance" and then use the list as specific examples, or to add an elastic clause at the end of the list that said "and other contract devices as the commissioner may determine" or something along those lines. The fact that there is a well defined and specific list shows that there were specific valid tools that were invalid only during a period when the league faced an uncapped year. It is convoluted at best to assert after the fact that all such contract devices were subject to unwritten and precocious rules.

Your best points come when you expound on the procedural points and the arbitrator's role. If the league is ever forced to present your theory of implied agreement I imagine the NFLPA would be up in arms denying to their very core.

That's a fair argument. However, I'm not making the argument that the NFLMC and NFLPA agreed on how to handle that exact situation.

I'm only presenting it as evidence that the NFLPA wasn't opposed to the principle of restricting how much salary cap hit could or couldn't be dumped into an uncapped year.

The original argument was that keeping teams from dumping cap hit into an uncapped year constitutes illegal collusion. I'm only saying that it's probably not collusion if the NFLPA agreed to multiple rules that seem to intend to accomplish the same thing.