Salary Caps

In class on March 17, we discussed salary caps.  A salary cap is a limit a team can spend on player salaries.  The salary cap is based on the Defined Gross Revenue of the league.  It is a way to keep the league balanced so that there are no teams that dominate year after year.  The salary cap has also been a major problem in negotiations between players and owners.  Currently, the NFL is looking at a lockout due to differences in opinions on how much players should be paid.  Also, the NBA is possibly going to lockout next year due to the same thing.  In the past, the NBA, MLB, and NHL have all locked out during the regular season because of disagreements over the salary cap and how much players should be paid.

In my opinion, every pro league should have a hard salary cap.  A hard salary cap is a set limit on how much a team can spend on player salaries.  They are not allowed to exceed this limit.  The NFL and NHL both use hard salary caps.  I do not like the soft cap, which is used by the NBA.  This is when a team can spend over the cap limit under certain circumstances such as the "Larry Bird Exemption" which allows a team to pay a player that has been with that team for 3 or more years what they are worth.  Meaning a team can spend  ridiculous amounts of money on a player.

The MLB on the other hand has no salary cap at all.  I believe that if they did have a salary cap interest in the league would rise greatly.  I know that many people are sick and tired of hearing about the Yankees (even though I love them) and the Red Sox but since they spend the most on players, they usually have the best teams.  Not having a salary cap hurts small market teams.  There is just no way small market teams can compete with big market teams spending over $200 million a year on players.


http://ezinearticles.com/?Salary-Caps-in-Pro-Sports---the-Cost-of-Players-vs-Owners&id=201992

After reading this article, I could clearly see that the views we discussed and mostly agreed on in class are shared by other people too.  This article confirms most of our beliefs that the MLB should install a salary cap like the NFL and NHL and that the NBA should switch to a hard cap.