Salary cap in the NFL?

[Nym90]

Just curious what you all thought of this....I think it's worked quite well, but you must admit, the idea of a salary cap is quite socialistic.

[The Duke]

I support the cap, but players that were drafted by a team or have been with a team for five years should have their cap numbers pro-rated.

It isn't all that socialistic.  An individual player, for all intents and purposes can make almost any amount of money.  Teams do not have profits limited in any major way.  Remember, these are all franchises of a single business, not many businesses competing against each other.

[English]

No.
It's similar to soccer players in the UK being paid 20 million a year. It's outrageous yes, but if supporters are willing to pay vast sums to watch games, then it's their affair. Personally I think they're idiots.

[ATFFL]

The salary cap created parity.  Which created more competitive teams and more interesting games.  Which sent ratings skyrocketing.  Which increased TV revenue.  Which is shared equally among all teams and sent profits soaring.

Salary cap did not lower a single player's salary, just made some move to a new team.  This allowed small market teams to spend more money on role-players.  This increased the salary for good linemen, halfbacks and blocking tight ends.  As the salary cap increases over time every player makes more money.  Players at all positions are making more money than ever before and at a rate that increases greater than the rate of inflation.

The salary cap was simply good business.  I credit the owners of the NFL for seeing beyond the short term bottom line (it did go down slightly for a few powerhouse teams) and seeing that they could make oodles more money by taking the short term hit.

Compare this to the NBA salary cap, which a team can safely ignore for years on end without penalty, then obey it for one year and all the years of ignorance are erased.

NHL wants an NFL style salary cap, but the players are against it.  The few highest paid players are anyway.  The ones who make closer to the league minimum need to realize that this is a good plan for them.  The few successful NHL teams are also set against profit sharing.  

MLB is moving towards a real salary cap.  We can only hope they succeed.

[NHPolitico]

Sports are about uniformity of conditions (hell, we even talk about a level "playing field"). I support the salary cap. Baseball needs one.