[Xevious]

I wont' go into the specifics of each city, but I would not consider Dallas, Oakland, and Denver small market teams where football is concerned. A large population center does not mean a large fan base. LA, Phoenix, and Atlanta have huge populations but lousy fan support, while a small town like Green Bay has a fairly large fan base. The NFL was smart enough to maintain balance between markets of various sizes through revenue sharing.

The revenue sharing system in the NFL ensures the teams will get equal shares of the TV revenue which is where most of the NFL salaries come from. Ticket revenue is also split evenly. Extra revenue for each team comes from skyboxes, concessions/parking, and sales of merchandise. Note, even with the cap and revenue sharing there are teams that are closer to the minimum spending level than the max. These teams will never be able to compete without the cap.

If you remove the salary cap and somehow maintain revenue sharing you will still have an unbalanced league since many owners have large income sources outside of football. Do you really want Dan Snyder making the NFL equivalent of the Yankees by paying his team 2-3 times as much as other teams? Only 12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs, should the fans of teams without deep pockets be happy just making the playoffs?

Baseball provides the best example of what happens when there is no cap. I would have to check on this stat, but since 1994, I think the Marlins are the only baseball team to make the world series and have a team salary that wasn't in the top 10. It’s also obvious that everyone except Yankee fans are sick of seeing the Yankees in the World Series.

Like I said earlier I understand the desire to see the clash of dominant teams in the SuperBowl, but the salary cap is the only way to be fair to all of the teams and their fans. The cap seems to work too since the NFL is the only major league sport where the viewer-ship has increased the past several seasons. That may not be a fair conclusion but I think it's related.