Explain the NFL Salary Cap to Me

[Brush with Greatness 0]

I know there is the topic on selling someone a salary cap for baseball but I didn't want to sift through 5 pages of people arguing about the Yankees to find what I am looking for.

 

So can anyone explain the NFL salary cap to me?

 

From what I take, the idea is for every team to make money. The TV contract is split up and a large part of the salary cap is based around that. Is there revenue sharing as well? And from my interpretation if there is a big increase in revenue for teams one year then the next year the salary cap level will jump accordingly. That's my understanding of it.

 

Can anyone explain to me the actual details?

[sfaJack 0]

I know there is the topic on selling someone a salary cap for baseball but I didn't want to sift through 5 pages of people arguing about the Yankees to find what I am looking for. 

 

So can anyone explain the NFL salary cap to me?

 

From what I take, the idea is for every team to make money.  The TV contract is split up and a large part of the salary cap is based around that.  Is there revenue sharing as well?  And from my interpretation if there is a big increase in revenue for teams one year then the next year the salary cap level will jump accordingly.  That's my understanding of it.

 

Can anyone explain to me the actual details?

You got a few hours? It's incredibly complicated. Certainly more than I'm sure we care to dive into here, especially given my limited knowledge of the ins-and-outs of it. There's probably a website somewhere that explains it.

[the pinjockey 0]

I don't think there is revenue sharing in football. The main reason it is in place in baseball is every team makes their own local tv deals, I think. And that can cause wide gaps in revenue between teams. NFL, tv deals, are done for the whole league, not team by team. And the money is split up evenly amongst the teams.

 

The NFL salary cap is a hard cap. No luxury tax if you go over arrangement. The thing that kills teams cap numbers are signing bonuses. If you sign a player the signing bonus is divided evenly along the length of the contract. But if you decide to trade/release the player, you get hit with the remaining part of the bonus the next year. That is why you don't really see too many trades. They recently made an exception, where you can sign a veteran for X amount of dollars, but it will only count as the league minimum (a much lower sum) against the cap. Because veterans were having a hard time getting signed, the veteran minimum was about 750 grand when you could bring in a rookie to do the same job for about 450 grand.

 

I am not really sure what plays into the increase in the cap from year to year.

 

I don't really know what else you want to know.

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

It's not actually revenue sharing, but everyone gets a cut of the L's truly massive TV contract.

 

anyway, the cap is in fact a cap. You have to be under it by the start of the year. The only exception is you can always sign players for the minimum, which varies depending on how long they've been playing.

 

as for what determines the cap, I think it's just how much cash the league is making in general. The last few years it's gone up about $1.5 mil per year. I could be wrong but I think it's at like 48 million right now.

[Bored 0]

Two things about the NFL salary cap that bother me or should I say suggested changes for it. First they need to put in a Larry Bird Exemption type of rule to allow teams to keep veterans who have played a certain number of years with that team. Its ridiculous players like Jerry Rice and Junior Seau have to be cap casualties. Also there needs to be a seperate cap for signing draft picks. Its insanity that teams have to cut veterans just to be able to stay under the cap just to sign their draft picks when not all of them are a lock to make the team.