The Salary Cap: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Jim Henley offers some suggestions for naming new stadia in D.C. and Indianapolis.

I would like to add that this is a particular drawback to the NFL salary cap/revenue sharing structure that we’re all supposed to admire so much. (The corollary being that we’re supposed to evaluate the league’s structure by how much money the owners make. Some semblance of a free market might actually allow players to earn market value, but as we know it’s only acceptable to have lots of money if you’re white and had lots of it in the first place. And I particularly can’t believe these uppity 18-year old players who want to join the NBA! Seriously, if you’re dumb enough to think that a multi-million dollar contract is more valuable than 20 credits toward a communications degree from Oklahoma State, you’ll never be a successful self-made entrepreneur like George Bush! But I digress.) All sports are subject to corporate welfare, of course. But in baseball, things seem to be drying up to some extent, as the fact that it took so long to move the Expos makes clear; they were lucky that the utter morons on the D.C. city council bailed them out, but there weren’t a lot of cities itching to build a new stadium out there. In the NFL, where the lack of significant market constraints means that you can be as profitable in Green Bay as in LA, the leverage over city councils is particularly high. So while I think the D.C. deal will be the last sweetheart baseball deal for a while, you’re going to see situations like the Indianapolis extortion continue in NFL cities. (You can say the same thing in NYC, of course; the city and state are willing to give the Jets a massive subsidy for their ridiculous Manhattan stadium scheme, but Steinbrenner will have to pay for most of a new Yankee Stadium himself, although the Yankees are vastly more important to the city than the Jets.) But the NFL holds down the salaries of players who often suffer debilitating injuries in short careers, and of course that’s the important thing!