Professional Sports Salary Caps For Better

General• Salary Cap- A set spending limit that a sports team

is allowed to spend on their athletes each year at a time.

• The teams are not ever aloud to go over this set limit.

• Every team in one sports league has the same cap limit.

Thesis

• All professional sports leagues should have individual team salary caps because the competition for every game would be fair, all teams in one league would be even with each other, and the salary caps between all of the big four sports leagues would be consistent with each other as well.

Blueprint 1Fair Competition

• The National Football League initiated salary caps before the NBA and NHL did in 1994.

• The NFL is the number one most watched professional sport in the United States today. The NBA is the second most watched sport in the United States, and the NBA received team salary caps shortly after the NFL did.

• The MLB still to this day, does not have salary caps.• Salary caps cause greater on-field equivalence,

making it more interesting for all kinds of fans, and possibly even more enjoyable for the athletes too.

Blueprint 1 Continued…

• NBA and NFL teams can not keep all of their highly paid veterans year after year. Those veterans usually go to a mediocre teams that are in desperate need of a skilled veteran.

• Salary cap proponents say that team finances would become more balanced with salary caps, enabling franchises in smaller cities to better compete with their big-city counterparts.

Cardinals: $84 million

Falcons: $101 million

Ravens: $104 million

Bills: $98 million

Panthers: $108 million Bears: $104 million

Bengals: $95 million

Browns: $113 million

Cowboys: $121 million

Broncos: $107 million

Lions: $85 million

Packers: $95 million

Texans: $101 million

Colts: $128 million

Jaguars: $110 million

Chiefs: $86 million

Dolphins: $101 million

Vikings: $105 million

Patriots: $119 million

Saints: $130 million

Giants: $112 million

Jets: $125 million

Raiders: $116 million

Eagles: $93 million

Steelers: $105 million

Chargers: $107 million

49ers: $111 million

Seahawks: $103 million

Rams: $109 million

Buccaneers: $86 million

Titans: $93 million

Redskins: $131 million

List of Major League Baseball Teams By

Payroll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_teams_by_payroll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_teams_by_payroll

Blueprint 2 Even Teams

• The New York Yankees spend over to 200 million dollars each year and make the playoffs nearly every year

• The Milwaukee Brewers roughly spend about 30 million dollars each year and hardly make the playoffs year after year in Major League Baseball.

Even Teams

• Salary cap limits are a good idea because they keep a team split up from newer players and veterans. Sports teams with salary caps never have an all-veteran starting team because they can’t afford to pay them all. A healthy sports team has to have variety. Teams with a lot of variety helps the players learn different things from each other and get better as a team.

• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers spent the most and the New York Jets spent the least in the 2007-2008 season. Both these teams had winning records and only fell one game short of the playoffs at the end of the season.

Blueprint 2

• If a team has a lot more money than another team, then they will most likely do better than that team year after year.

• Many people hate the Yankees just for the fact that they are overly stacked with good players because of their overpowering amount of money.

Blueprint 3 Equal Leagues

• All the NFL teams had a maximum spending spree of $132 million for the 08-09 season. The Yankees have less than one half of the players that an NFL team has, and still spent almost twice as much as an NFL team is aloud to spend in one year.

• A newly drafted MLB rookie could be making more than a 5-year NFL or NBA veteran would in his first year, especially if he got drafted by the Yankees.

Blueprint 3 Continued…

• Since owners must spend so much money on enormous player salaries, franchises must raise ticket prices. So, with salary caps, the less money athletes make the less money fans have to pay to get into a game.

• After time, salary caps with some flexibility would allow teams and individual players to be more hard-working towards the money they earn. If they didn’t make as much money, then they would work even harder to earn it.

Future Changes To All Sports• Even though NHL players and owners continue to struggle through

their salary cap dispute, sports-industry analysts predict that pro baseball will eventually get something similar in the future.

• Maybe a cap similar to the salary cap that was introduced to the NFL could even be used in other sports, generating the same results, attracting a lot more fans.

• The NBA and NFL both have had functioning salary caps for years, and are immune to future labor troubles. They will eventually have to be renewed or renegotiated. This would most likely be the time that the MLB would be introduced to salary caps, finally making them similar to all the other professional sports that have already had a cap limit for years.

.• “Maybe star athletes would try

harder if they didn’t have such whopping salaries over their competitors. If salaries were entirely based on performance, athletes would be more competitive than ever with each other” (Robert Sullivan).

• “In the NHL, all teams are playing on a more level playing surface, and the fans in every market have a more competitive team to support” (FOF Staff).

• Many of the NFL’s teams became increasingly competitive after a salary cap was imposed on all teams in 1994” (Salary Caps Promoted, 1).

Quotes• “Sports leagues are much more monopolistic than any of us

would like to admit. But, they are also like private clubs, and you simply need to follow the rules. Salary caps are definitely what can make a small-market and large-market team even with each other” ” (King, 21).

• “Sports fans don’t like anything more than watching a competitive game that goes back and fourth from the beginning until the end, not knowing who will win until the last second ticks away. Salary caps are your answer to keeping sports fair and even” (The 11 Million Dollar Man, 4).

In conclusion, Many changes should

be made in the near future, and it would probably be the most effective change that has ever been applied to sports. So, will everyone finally get to see the day that the Yankees will end a season with a losing record?

Will Alex Rodriguez and Ben Roethlisberger make the same

amount of money?

Will the Milwaukee Brewers finally make the playoffs?