I don't know the exact years of the change, but until the AFL created a competitive market, the NFL had lifetime control over a player, and effectively kept salaries down. Of course, there was far less money to go around, also. I remember Bill Glass, an all-pro defensive end for the Cleveland Browns, lived a couple of blocks from us in a very middle class neighborhood, and Jerry Kramer talked about making $20,000 as an all pro for the Packers. The WFL started in hopes of doing the same thing as the AFL (forcing a merger), and broke up a lot of teams by stealing away players. Calvin Hill stated that his signing bonus with the WFL was several times bigger than his entire contract with the Cowboys. Each of these leagues gave players options.
Revenue sharing helped smaller market teams stay viable, but ticket prices and stadium differences and market size still gave an advantage to large market teams and teams like the Packers, Cowboys and Steelers that had a national following. If market size alone dictated anything though, there would be a team in Los Angeles.
The salary cap has affected teams, and Bill Belechick has given everyone else the blueprint for winning in a market era.
First, you need to be able to evaluate talent. You can't afford to have cap space tied up in non-productive players. Second, you can't fixate on any one player. Jerry Jones has gotten burned several times by fixating on a player, Mike Ditka did the same thing with Ricky Williams, and I suspect the Raiders are going to regret the day they signed Russell. You guys have already mentioned Vick.
Second, you can sign a player to big bucks, but he'd better be somebody who won't get slowed down by a fat wallet. Tom Brady is a perfect example of a guy who wants to win, and didn't drop his level of play when he got a big contract. Roy Williams of the Cowboys dropped his level of play the day he signed his big contract, and now the Cowboys are stuck with him. Can't cut him because of the cap hit, can't trade him for the same reason.
Third, darned few players are worth franchise tags. The Patriots have let a lot of people go because they wanted bigger contracts, but keep finding people with smaller names of similar abilities.
All of that goes back to one thing: Belichik can evaluate talent and not overpay for it.
There's one other thing that's happened. There's a lot more overall talent out there. I photograph high school and college ball, and the high school kids out there are getting better coaching and conditioning across the board. This shows up in college ball, where an Appalachian State can play against a Michigan. I photographed games with Texas State and the University of Texas this year, and yeah, UT still has better talent, but it's not THAT much better. High school kids are running sophisticated spread offenses and playing 3-4s with defensive ends dropping into coverage on linebacker blitzes. You just didn't see that level of sophistication at the high school level even 15 years ago.
Alberta’s Child and I go around on this every couple of years. I have a lot of respect for his sports knowledge across the board, but consider this issue a blind spot of his.
The cap isn’t perfect of course. IMHO the cap should have a discount for single team veterans, any guy that was drafted by your team and has been there 10 years should have a percentage of his salary not count on the cap. I do prefer sports with less player movement, and it is sad to see guys leave their true team for cap reasons. Although we should keep in mind that even before the cap good GMs tended to show very little nostalgia when it came to aging players with large contractual desires, so that’s not 100% a cap caused problem.
But I do like the any given Sunday league. I like a league that starts every season with a good 15 to 20 teams able to make legitimate claims to being contenders, I think it’s a damn sight more entertaining than the late 80s and early 90s when there weren’t even enough legitimate contenders to fill the playoff spots.
And definitely “market size” is a very fluid concept. Thanks to memorabilia sales (some of which is shared some isn’t) there are small market teams with big market revenue. Though they do still tend to take a hit in the stands, you can generally charge more in a bigger city and still sell out (assuming you have the local fanbase) , and home teams still get the majority of the gate.
Well I gotta run again. Mom’s hitting one of the big numbers and it’s time to take her out... to dinner of course.