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You’re always harping on that 9-7 thing and really it’s to your detriment. you always lose sight of the fact that most of the teams in the pre-cap era actually sucked eggs. Everybody thinks about the mighty days of the Niners and the Cowboys and the Giants and the Skins and talks about how great the games were. Everybody forgets about the Bay of Pigs games, the general suckiness of the entire AFC, the NFC Central, and most of the NFC west. Sure when the GOOD teams played each other there was some great football, but there were never more than 3 or 4 of them throughout the 80s. Power flocked to the big market teams with the fat cash.

Frankly all 4 of these teams could have won the AFC in the time of NFC dominance, where of course they’d have gotten their asses handed to them in the SB just like all the other AFC teams. But they would have done better than 9-7. And you missed some of the BEST playoff football that’s been played. It’s sad that you’re not a fan anymore, but that’s really your fault, not the league’s. The game is better now than it was back then, the more good teams, there are more contested games, there are no more boring assed super teams whopping the crap out of the league.

Your recollection of the pre-cap era is really hazy. Who were the "big market" teams back then? The Giants and Jets -- who have long played in the biggest sports market in North America -- were terrible teams for years (and the Jets were far more successful in the recent salary cap era than they had been in the past). Same goes for the Chicago Bears, and the Los Angeles Rams were hardly a dominant team back then (and didn't have any real success until they moved to St. Louis). The dominant teams in the 1970s were the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dallas Cowboys, the Oakland Raiders and the Miami Dolphins. In the 1980s, you had the San Francisco 49ers, the Washington Redskins, the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants. And the best non-championship team of the decade was probably the Cleveland Browns, who had the misfortune of facing Denver twice in the AFC playoffs. You even had the Buffalo Bills -- who play in one of the worst markets in all of sports -- run off four consecutive conference championships. That's hardly a case of dominance by "big-market teams with the fat cash."

The fixation on "big market" vs. "small market" in pro football (and most sports) is disingenuous, because it is based on a distinction that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. How is it that the Dallas Cowboys are a "big market" team, while the Texas Rangers -- who play in the same damn city -- are a "small market" team? And how is it that the Washington Redskins are a "big market" team, while the Washington Nationals are not? You can run through all of the major sports and find similar cases of clear inconsistency in the definition of these markets (Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins, Oakland Raiders and Oakland Athletics, Denver Broncos and Colorado Rockies, the Montreal Canadiens and the old Montreal Expos, etc.).

I have said here on any number of occasions that the NFL's salary cap is not the problem. The problem is the way the cap is applied -- which effectively fails to reward teams that draft well and fails to punish teams that draft poorly . . . and results in the kind of massive player movement from one roster to another that makes it impossible to build a team to be a strong contender over time (and results in this fan losing interest in his team -- and eventually the NFL).

There was a time when a strong NFL team was built through wise scouting and drafting, good player development, and (occasionally) prudent trades. Nowadays, an NFL general manager simply drafts as well as he can (without losing much sleep over it, mind you), and then looks to sign good players from other rosters whose teams "can't afford" them due to the league's salary cap rules. The result is a league where continuity is non-existent, chemistry is meaningless (you see this especially among offensive linemen and defensive backfields), and the quality of play has fallen off dramatically. The abject mediocrity of the NFL is perfectly illustrated by the fact that cap-era Super Bowls have been contested by teams with quarterbacks like Chris Chandler, Trent Dilfer, Kerry Collins, Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, and Rex Grossman. Most of these guys would have struggled to even start on an NFL team 20 years ago -- let alone lead a team to a conference title.

If you really want to get a sense of just how bad the NFL has become, just take a look at the quarterbacks in the league today. After 15 regular-season games this year, many fans of the NY Giants were wondering whether Eli Manning even belonged on the field -- and were suggesting that perhaps the team should be looking to sign or draft a new one next year. And even then he was still in the top half of the NFL among quarterbacks -- which shows you just how weak the league has become in that regard (even with all of the rules that are supposed to make it easier to pass the ball these days).