Projo Pats Blog

BY TOM E. CURRAN

Chaos or calm?

That's what NFL owners will be choosing between today when they meet in Dallas today and vote on whether or not to accept the NFLPA proposal to extend the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The proposal allows for the league salary cap in 2006 and 2007 will be 57 percent of the previous year's total football revenues. In 2008 and 2009, it will be 57.5 percent. It will rise to 58 percent in 2010 and 2011.

This means the 2006 salary cap will be about 106.6 million per team if the proposal is accepted. Last season, the cap was $85.5 million per team. The cap will be $94.5 million if the deal is rejected.

The proposal also includes a "clawback provision" to deal with the issue of cash over cap. If the total money spent by teams in a league year (including signing bonuses and incentives paid) is more than the salary cap percentage in a given season, the cap will be lowered in succeeding years.

For example, if the 2006 salary cap is 57 percent of total football revenues but teams spend 58 percent of TFR in when signing bonuses and all prorated items are added in, then the cap will be lowered by .02 percent over the final five seasons of the CBA.

ESPN.com reported that NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw and a passel of lawyers from both sides met yesterday in New York to finalize the proposal.

Today's meeting is expected to be very contentious as owner factions wrangle over revenue sharing. ESPN also reported that there's little difference between this proposal from the players and the one the owners unanimously rejected last week.

It will take 24 of the 32 NFL owners to vote in favor of the proposal to have it pass. The onus is now on the owners to vote in favor of the proposal - and Tagliabue to convince them why they should - or face the prospect of a 2007 without a salary cap.

The discord in today's meeting will revolve around the "cash over cap" issue. It's believed that low-revenue teams will view the clawback provision as being an insufficient deterrent to keeping high-revenue teams from spending more in true payroll in a given season by giving out big bonuses. High-revenue teams could resist having to pay restitution for going over the cap.

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