Decline and Fall

Good stuff. I'm not going to trample on your Football as an event take, but I'm really interested to hear it. Chuck Klosterman wrote about that at length during his Super Bowl running diary a few years ago, I'll try to track it down but I want to see what you have to say first.

What I do want to say, is RIGHT NOW the NFL is the best run league from a financial standpoint, but my question is: will this continue to be the case when the CBA expires? If 2011 is a cap-free season, can football continue to be a paragon of economic sports virtue? I'm not going to go all Ralph Wilson here, and I have pretty mixed feelings about salary caps in general. But one of the oft-repeated reasons the NFL is considered so great, is parity.

However, I question if this will continue to be the case. If, for instance, they do lose the salary cap and contracts are still not guaranteed then what is to prevent a handful of teams for loading up for one year and cutting the players afterward? I feel like this would have a devastating effects on a whole host of teams.

I hate the lack of guaranteed contracts in football. Teams front-load with bonus money but no contract means anything. Honestly, the Bills could Marshawn Lynch to a 25 year 8 billion dollar contract, but cut him with no consequence (its conceivable I’m fuzzy on the details here but I know for a fact no team will ever get saddled with a Julio Lugo, or Barry Zito contract). So, careers are short but careers with any one team are even shorter.

If I was to pick one league that was going to gear up for a major work-stoppage it would be the NFL because the players have such an excruciating raw deal from every side and I suspect if such a work-stoppage does occur this will effect the primacy in the American sports consciousness. At the very least the argument that it is a league above all others will indisputably be put to bed.