Messing around with cap limits surely does screw up competitive balance. I’m not a fan of either the Cowboys or the Skins, but if their owners were willing to pay Steinbrenner to try to win, that’s fair, and I’m happy to root against their attempts to buy titles. I’m not happy to have the other owners hamstring them after the fact to try to enforce collective cheapskate behavior.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that there were no rules for 2010. There were rules — the prior CBA that said that 2010 would be an uncapped year. Uncapped year meant that they could pay everybody infinite amounts for that year and that they could give everybody contracts that had all the cash in that year. A billion $ for 2010 and a dollar a year for all other years of a contract is fair if the year was really uncapped. That’s the club that the CBA allowed the players and the more rich owners to hold over the less rich owners who wanted to let the CBA expire to force a better deal.

If I’m Jones and Snyder, and I’ve got a contract (the CBA) that says that I can spend all I want in 2010, I don’t care how many times somebody else “warns” me not to do it, I’ve got a contract that says I can.

I’m a fan of the league, and I want to know how the other teams can force on these two a penalty that wasn’t in the contract. If there’s something in the new CBA that allows the league to penalize certain owners for doing what the old CBA allowed, let’s hear what that is.

And if I were a season ticket holder for the Boys or Skins, I’d be screaming for the teams to explain to me what stops them from fighting a penalty that seems unfair. Did these two sign onto something in the new CBA that makes them have to take this? The teams’ fans should want to know, or see some explanation about why they wouldn’t go to the mat on this one.

Because 2010 was an uncapped year, any team could have done what the Skins and Boys did. However, every team in the NFL don’t have the revenue stream that these two teams have, with Stadium Revenue, Sponsorship, etc.

So, just like the Yankess and Red Sox of MLB and Lakers, Knicks and Mavericks of the NBA. All have significant revenue streams that other teams in their leagues don’t.

As a fan of a small market team (Bengals Fan), I hate that we can’t compete with the revenue streams of the Cowboys, Redskins and Patriots.

Is it unfair, Yes!! But that’s the way it works in a Capitalistic Society!!

Yes, it was for Miles Austin… And, he’s not a new player so your statement: “by dumping a majority of the salaries to new signees into the uncapped year”, is incorrect.

Front loading contracts are nothing new!! Its been done for years. Hell, it was done this week, ala Megatron’s Deal!! As well as whatever Mario Williams finally signs for as well as Payton Manning. HUGE Upfront Bonus money is “Front Loading Contracts”.

It basically comes down to the “Haves and Have Nots”. And not just in the NFL. Big money teams in the NBA, MLB and even NHL do it.

i continue to think that this isnt an issue that they paid the players but how they paid the players.

by dumping a majority of the salaries to new signees into the uncapped year they essentially gave themselves an unfair advantage by circumventing the cap in future years.

its not that the others owners didn’t want to pay the players its that the redskins and cowboys did it in a way to help themselves out in the future.

so now the league is taking that they thought they gave themselves back

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I totally agree. It not that the league was colluding , it the fact that 2 team played word games with contracts.
Example-In the Cowboys’ case, it was the lumping of $17 million of base salary into the uncapped year in an apparent effort to draw down his cap hit in future years.

Don’t be mad our owners spend money on their respective football teams.

The difference between what the other (8 teams I believe, including the superbowl winning Packers) did was they signed new people to deals rather than restructure deals that already existed. The skins and cowboys also used techniques to make massive amounts of the restructured deals disappear during that uncapped year so that once the CBA was completed they wouldn’t have to worry about the cap hit, the other teams gave more standard deals to their players where they did get rid of some money during the non-capped year, but most of their contracts were still spread throughout the length of the contract. I think the teams still got rid of at least $10 million each that way, but those contracts still felt some cap hit after the CBA.

The union has agreed to turn a blind eye to an illegal practice that took money out its members pockets in 2010 for a payment of no more than $128 million this year.

The union ought to be even more pissed about this than the Redskins and Cowboys. The league has ADMITTED they were involved in collusion designed to suppress player salaries during a season that was specifically negotiated to be uncapped.

Now the two biggest spenders — two of the highest revenue teams — have been prevented from doing the kind of spending they’d normally do. And the union just takes it, even though many teams won’t even use that redistributed $1.6 million.

It’s stunning.

The sad thing for the players is many teams won’t use the extra $1.6 million. Look at this year where the Cardinals only carried over $2 million of the possible $7 million from 2011. Just an example of one team that won’t be spending the extra cap space that they get via this scam.

As a Cowboys fan would love to see Jones stick it to them. The fact that Jerry has been so quiet on this issue so far amazes me more than anything else! I imagine there will be more to come at the owners meeting later this month.

All that being said, the NFL definitely overstepped on this issue. All the contracts that where in question where ALL approved by the NFL and NFLP. So, this is nothing more than an attempt by owners with less revenue to stick it too two of the more wealthy owners for doing what they have done for years in this NFL Salary Cap World we live it today.

Was it illegal for both teams to do this, NO. Was it fair gamesmanship, NO. But, the bottom line is there wasn’t any rules violations here and therefore no penalties should have been inflicted on either team.

This is a law suit ready to happen, but my guess is that neither owner will go that route. However, both make sure that the commissioner know how they feel and will be owed a HUGE favor of the commissioner some day. In the Words of Marlon Brando in the God Father Movie: Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day accept this justice as gift”…

One day, Jerry and Dan will come to the Goddell and ask for a favor.. And he will owe them, for NOT Suing and dragging this out in court!!!!

It was pure collusion…owners wanted to cheat the players and the Boys/Skins didnt participate…plain and simple.

The League WAS worried about it, that’s why they didn’t do this until they were in a position to ‘bribe’ the Union into not calling collusion with an increase in the overall cap. Bribe may not the right word, blackmail might be more representative of what the NFL did.

The Chairman of the NFL Executive Committee is John Mara!

So the owner of the Giants decided two teams from his own division should be punished for breaking no rules.

Again, the head of the committe that decided to only punish two NFC East teams is the owner of their division rival, even though a dozen other teams dumped cap space into the “uncapped year”!

They did not “cheat”. What they did was try to screw their fellow partners.

It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that whatever was agreed on ( “collusion”, an “unwritten rule” or a “gentleman’s agreement”) was followed by every team EXCEPT these two. They made a choice to see what they could get away with-how far they could push the envelope- and now they got their answer.

Remember who punished who here. It wasn’t Goodell laying down the law-it was the guys ABOVE Goodell who dropped the hammer. The other owners punished these two.