Salary Cap Research Paper

Salary caps are a very important tool used in professional sports. All 4 major professional sports leagues in the United States have a salary cap installed into their collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players. Those four major sports are, the NFL, the NBA, the MLB and the NHL. A salary cap is defined as s an agreement or rule that places a limit on the amount of money that a team can spend on players' salaries. It can be as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster. It is basically put in place to help the small market teams stay competitive. It is meant so the wealthy teams, also called big market teams, does not always stay dominant by signing the best players to very big contracts. Salary caps are

Having salary caps for sports teams is an easy way to create equal opportunity for every team within a league. Without salary caps, the wealthiest teams pay for the

A salary cap is designed to keep player salaries from increasing at the rate they were at the time. The salary cap is basically a set amount of money that each of the NFL's 32 teams is allowed to spend on player salaries for any given year. Since salaries have continued to grow at a rate outpacing the salary cap, teams have found ways to get around the cap. One way is signing bonuses, which don't count toward a team's cap for a given year. A player who receives a signing bonus gets more money for that year than his recorded salary, this way it leaves more room in the cap for the other players. The advantage for the player is that all signing bonus money is guaranteed to be paid, whereas an NFL contract is not guaranteed. All players receive a minimum base salary. The base salary is the value according to his contract. The cap value represents the player's calculated signing bonus, plus salary and other bonuses for the season.

Do you think professional athletes are overpaid? You might think they earn more than what they are worth for playing half a year, but athletes have many things which contribute to their salary. Some of these things include their earnings from endorsements, ticket sales, performance, merchandise, their social contributions, and TV ratings. Although there are many factors that contribute to their salary, professional athletes may be overpaid because as a society, we contribute to their success. So, in the end, part of the athlete’s salary comes from the people who support the sports in the first place. These are just some of the reasons why athletes are paid so much money.

He states, "This is not about stupidity, it is about what is fair in baseball, and what is not. It is about the overall appeal of the national pastime. It is about caring, interest, and most of all, competition. Right now, there is very little of any of these components outside of the 212 area code." Most importantly, he explains why baseball needs a salary cap by saying "it is the only way to put constraints on what the Yankees are doing and to return the sport to the interesting and suspenseful form of sporting entertainment it once used to be." The Yankees are at an unfair advantage all across the league, and nobody, not Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, or perhaps even Los Angeles, can acquire talent the way they can. The only way to prevent them from doing so is to put a cap on how much they can pay their entire team.

There are five major sports leagues in the United States; Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Basketball Association (which has what is known as a “soft salary cap), the National Football League, and the National Hockey League. Of these five, only baseball lacks what is known as a salary cap. A salary cap is the upper limit of the combined salaries for a team’s players. In the other four sports I mentioned, having to work within the boundaries of a salary cap is a balancing act, to gain an advantage at one position requires you to be at a disadvantage at another position. For example, to have a top tier quarterback in the NFL like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers and the large salary they command, a team might lack the funds to sign a top tier linebacker or cornerback. With Major League Baseball lacking a salary cap, this balancing act vanishes and teams could sign anyone and everyone they wished. This causes a competitive imbalance that is hurting the sport. Too often we see the same teams making the playoffs and winning championships like the San

There is a dearth of empirical literature regarding the topic of NBA player salary determinants. Whereas there have been some articles written on NBA player salary discrimination, the lack of empirical evidence as it relates to player performance and its impact on player salary have been virtually non-existent. This investigation serves to contribute to the paucity of empirical literature regarding NBA player salaries. Wage fund theory was chosen to guide this study. According to this theory, wages are determined by the amount of capital available to pay workers. As capital increases so do worker raises. This theory has a direct correlation to the NBA salary cap. The salary cap is comprised of Basketball Related Income (BRI) which consists of revenue generated from ticket sales, national and local broadcast deals, in

Forbes says “If payment begins and there is no cap, the bidding war among colleges for some players will be hard to control. Are people ready for the few colleges with the financial resources (which would be ten to twenty schools) getting virtually all the best football and basket players? (Forbes) With pay to the coming to the student the want and drive to play in the NFL. There would not be any incentive to play in the professional league, when they are making good money in the college level. College is an amateur sport and should be treated that that way and not glorify the students athletes.

Twenty-five million dollars made per year. Over one hundred fifty-four thousand dollars made per game. Over forty-seven thousand dollars earned per at bat. Sounds a little ridiculous, does it not? That is what current Texas Ranger shortstop Alex Rodriguez earns to play the game of baseball (azcentral.com). Baseball is a game that children have been playing in schoolyards and fields for the past one hundred years. It may not be a game anymore. On the Major League level it has become a business. This is where the problem starts.

Every year, it becomes more obvious that many sports in America have problems. For years, Hockey has been criticized for its excessive violence. The National Football League has also been scrutinized for this reason as well as the fact that many of the top players have constantly been in trouble with the law. Major League Baseball is no different. The situation with baseball is more complicated, and is not only ruining the game itself, but also drawing millions of fans away from the sport. The biggest problem is with the high salaries paid to athletes. These salaries are taking the competitiveness out of several sports, especially baseball, where there is no salary cap. Action must be taken

Imagine a darkened evening in the spring the lights are slowly warming up to illuminate the field in which the cleats of the great will graze the grass and scuff up the freshly dragged dirt. The crowd is feeling anxiety to know if the umpire is going to call the pitch a ball or a strike. This is in the mind of every person that comes out to support their local major league baseball team. In recent decades the sport of baseball has become criticized for the amount of money that the owners pay their players for their services. The question On the minds of not only the general public, but to the owners and the fans is the salary paid to the players. Major League baseball players are paid too much.

Salaries in Baseball are skyrocketing every year. Why would a salary cap be needed? It would be needed to help keep ticket prices down, and help make for a more even level of competition for all of the teams. A salary cap is needed to keep baseball thriving in the future, to keep the game exciting and enjoyable to watch for every fan.

Salary Cap will also affect motivation of the players if they do not get what satisfy them. They will be majorly playing towards maximizing their wealth rather than wining and keeping the spirit of the game alive.

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

If I could pay someone $25 million a year to get him/her on my team and generate $30 million, why not hire that player? The salary cap for the NFL is $102.5 million per team, and we currently have 32 teams, so we the public are paying 3.28 billion to those teams. Currently America is in a 11 trillion dollar debt, if athletes could get paid $150,000/year then we could save 1 billion dollars a year. The monetary worth of athletes exceeds the value that any one individual is actually worth. League officials should be using salary caps, negotiations, and legal tactics. Athletes' salaries are in increasing problem for the economy of our modern world. Although the sports have their own equal distributions, the overwhelming salaries of the leagues' highest paid players have made the average of salaries higher and higher each year.