National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional American football league, consisting of thirty-two teams from American cities. The league was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, which adopted the name "National Football League" in 1922. The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.

Salaries and the salary cap

The minimum salary for an NFL player is $230,000 in his first year, and rises after that based on the number of years in service:

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Exhibition game minimum is $10,000.00

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These numbers are set by contract between the NFL and the players' union, the National Football League Players' Association. These numbers are of course exceeded dramatically by the best players in each position.

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Escalating player salaries throughout the 1980s and the advent of free agency in 1992 led to the NFL's adoption of a salary cap in 1994, a maximum amount of money each team can pay its players in aggregate. The cap is determined via a complicated formula based on the revenue that all NFL teams receive during the previous year. For the 2004 season, the NFL's salary cap was $ 80.582 million, an increase of $5.5 million from 2003. The cap for the 2005 season is expected to be approximately $85.5 million.

Related Topics:
1980s - Free agency - 1992 - Salary cap - 1994 - 2004 - 2003

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Proponents of the salary cap note that it prevents a well-financed team in a major city from simply spending giant amounts of money to secure the very best players in every position and thus dominating the entire sport. This has been seen as a problem in American baseball, long dominated since the advent of free agency by large market teams. They point to the relative parity of competition that exists in the NFL as of 2005 compared to Major League Baseball as evidence that the NFL salary cap preserves competitive balance. They claim fans end up paying higher ticket prices to help pay for escalating player salaries. These concerns, among others, led in part to modified salary cap adoption in the National Basketball Association in 1984 and the National Hockey League in 2005.

Related Topics:
Baseball - As of 2005 - Major League Baseball - National Basketball Association - 1984 - National Hockey League - 2005

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Critics of the salary cap note that the driving reason for the cap was to maximize the profitability of the NFL teams, and limit the power of NFL players to command the high salaries they are said to deserve in exchange for bringing in large numbers of paying fans to the stadiums. They also note that the salary cap could hypothetically drive prospective athletes to other sports that do not cap the salaries of players; furthermore, they attribute NFL competitive parity instead to the league's extensive revenue sharing policies. Libertarian commentators have also objected to a salary cap on philosophical grounds, calling the cap an infringement on labor rights.

Related Topics:
Revenue - Libertarian

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The NFL's current CBA (collective bargining agreement) expires in 2008.

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