SI/Lombardi on Uncapped Season

thanks for sharing.

i have an interview coming up real soon with an expert on the CBA and the law and business of sports more generally. I’ll ask some questions about some of the more confusing parts of that article.

Use this thread to ask any other questions you might have and I’ll try to work them in during the interview. Don’t just ask the basics either. Here’s our chance to get some really good first-hand info on this stuff (he’s involved in the rookie symposiums and other stuff like that for NFL players that relates to finances, etc.)

It almost seems like he is promoting essentially the same system that the Steelers run today, at least from the standpoint of having the right mix of youth and experience. The Steelers have had a relatively young team for a while now. I remember after the SB win, I looked at the roster on www.steelers.com, and it seemed like half the team had 3 or fewer years of experience.

Over time, I could see an uncapped system creating an NFL where the most successful teams will remain so, because they could always keep all of their best players, while the other teams had to let some go each year. But, it would seem that in the short term, this shouldn’t be the case.

I’d like to know how the Cowboys signed Barber and Newman to long term deals after the owners opted out.

I read in the Dallas News that part of this was because “The Cowboys turned Romo’s $6.5 million base salary into signing bonus, dropping the 2008 base salary to $605,000. Instead of carrying a cap figure of $8.416 million this year, Romo’s new cap number is almost $3.5 million, hence a saving of about $5 million and enough room to get Newman and Barber done and then some when added to the roughly $3.5 million they already had.”
Was this business as usual, or are the Cowboys- and any other team, able to overcome salary caps now by paying in later uncapped years?