Salary Cap doesn't equal parity

[WaterfallJumper]

Parity doesn't mean what some people think it does.

What Parity means, and what it absolutely SHOULD mean, is that the thing that separates the haves from the have-nots is competence rather than money. Incompetent teams will still surf the basement, supercompetent teams will still dominate the league.

The meaning of Parity is that you can't simply Steinbrenner your way to success. And the NFL is actually doing a pretty good job of that kind of parity. Even terrible teams can pay their players, and even excellent teams have to carefully weigh the pros and cons of bringing in additional talent.

That said there is absolutely no way to enforce any kind of competence parity without a system of relegation. Which as we all know is something that is simply never going to happen. At the very least, the salary cap is doing a great job of letting the smartest teams in the league dominate and giving very poor teams a chance to get lucky if they play their cards right.

For the record I would be all for creating a 12 team "shadow league" based in relatively open markets, that would allow you to relegate perennial underperformers to the shadow league and promote other, hungrier teams into their place... but that'd never get through the ownership. You could probably come up with a list of 12 towns to host NFL2 teams easily enough.

Some of my favorite esports leagues use relegation. Watching those matches are so tense, because the established players know that if they lose, then their franchise may cease to exist and they won't have jobs next season. Conversely, the challengers are so hungry for a win, even though usually they're not quite good enough to compete. The few teams that break through, though, have an enormous amount of pride in their work and generally do fairly well.

Neat idea, but I don't see it working in the NFL. Maybe in the new AAF or the XFL reboot could incorporate some of those ideas in the future.

 

[everlong]

The thing is if NE doesn't go those 9 times it would have meant

Pitt 01
Indy 03
Pitt 04
SD 07
Baltimore 11
Indy 14
Pitt 16
Jax 17
KC 18

Sure it expands it a little bit but it's still more of the same teams. The Patriots are definitely outside of the bell curve but I still think it hasn't given them what they thought.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Of course not.

Scheduling and draft position does (or should)

The more you win, the harder your schedule and the ****tier your draft position is.

If that doesn't work Team X would just get framed a couple of times for BS reasons and they take your top draft picks away and suspend your best player for a few games.

Next course of action in the NFL Parity rule book is the league chooses to arbitrarily add, enforce, remove rules that provide some kind of competitive advantage.

The "Nuclear Option" is the NFL forcing team ownership to sell to relatives of Victor Kiam.

 

[ALP]

“Parity” simply means teams have equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

...no

parity in the NFL means that no team overcomes another repeatedly, and each team has a similar likelihood to win the SB through a stretch of time, that's the goal of the NFL

the cap effectively gives each team equality of opportunity, along with FA, etc, it should be this way, but the NFL wants more than this, it also wants the top teams in teh league to alternate between the 32

and you can say it tips the scales to do that by hurting its best teams (pats) with bogus things (gates) in order to attempt to achieve equality of outcome because the processs they set up to achieve equality of opportunity hasn't worked to what they want

edit: one of the clearest examples of equality of outcome instead of opportunity is the draft...you give the worst teams the best picks, hoping that they get better

if you acted on an equality of opportunity framework, each team would have the "opportunity" to have the high pick, regardless of their standing

 

[lancerman]

The point of parity is that it sets a baseline it wants everyone at. It lowers the bar for bad teams by allowing them easier schedules and earlier draft picks. It heightens the bar for good teams by making them pick late and having them play more difficult schedules.

Good players on winning teams gets higher than average market value and thus can be priced out on the salary cap.

The salary cap itself prevents teams from getting two or three good drafts and having a dynasty like the Cowboys or Niner's.

 

[XLIX]

...no

parity in the NFL means that no team overcomes another repeatedly, and each team has a similar likelihood to win the SB through a stretch of time, that's the goal of the NFL

the cap effectively gives each team equality of opportunity, along with FA, etc, it should be this way, but the NFL wants more than this, it also wants the top teams in teh league to alternate between the 32

and you can say it tips the scales to do that by hurting its best teams (pats) with bogus things (gates) in order to attempt to achieve equality of outcome because the processs they set up to achieve equality of opportunity hasn't worked to what they want

edit: one of the clearest examples of equality of outcome instead of opportunity is the draft...you give the worst teams the best picks, hoping that they get better

if you acted on an equality of opportunity framework, each team would have the "opportunity" to have the high pick, regardless of their standing

... this is a poor response.

The draft is really the only way weaker teams benefit, and the NFL draft is no sure thing. (Before anyone says the schedule is easier for weaker teams, that is barely true, if at all. Only 2/16th of the schedule is determine by where you finished the previous year and who knows if those 2 teams will be strong or not).

If the NFL really wanted to punish good teams and reward bad, they would come up with a heckuva lot more than merely formatting the draft as they currently do.

 

[XLIX]

The salary cap itself prevents teams from getting two or three good drafts and having a dynasty like the Cowboys or Niner's.

And yet here we are with a team having a dynasty better than the Cowboys or 49ers.