Salary Cap

Despite his team's 3-7 record, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver is standing behind coach Tom Coughlin. But Weaver also isn't sticking his head in the Ponte Vedra Beach sand about the state of his franchise. The Jaguars have gotten themselves into a salary cap nightmare, having to trim more than $30 million in the 2001 off-season and facing comparable cutbacks in 2002. Weaver is trying to take some blame for the mess, but it's Coughlin who handles the day-to-day football operations.

NEW YORK -- The National Basketball Association's trading deadline came and went and . . . .Tony Campbell is still a Timberwolf, Orlando Woolridge is still a Nugget, Chuck Person is still a Pacer.The New York Knicks still have the entire collection of guys whom they were offering at a what they considered bargain prices to the other 27 teams. Except, for two games, Mark Jackson, who was suspended yesterday for "conduct detrimental to the team" -- presumably complaining about lack of playing time.

The NFL's salary cap gets blamed for everything these days but global warming. When a team wants to get rid of an aging veteran (Dan Marino, for example), it blames the salary cap. When the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys collapsed, the salary cap got the blame. When five teams that didn't make the playoffs a year ago won division championships in 1999, it was another example of how the salary cap changed pro football. When only two teams (Jacksonville and Minnesota) have had winning records for four straight years -- Dallas once had 20 straight winning seasons and Oakland and San Francisco did it for 16 -- the salary cap is cited as the reason.

Decisions in the past two days have suddenly given Washington Bullets general manager John Nash a $900,000 surplus in the team's salary cap with which to ponder a future acquisition.Nash first gained $130,000 by waiving reserve center Ralph Sampson, who has chosen to play the rest of the season in the Spanish Basketball League.Most of the rest came yesterday, when the National Basketball Association acted favorably on Nash's appeal to subtract half of suspended forward John Williams' $1.2 million salary from the $12.5 million team limit.

The salary cap is changing the face of the NFL, but not exactly in the way it originally was intended.It has done little to stop the league's salary escalation -- the Oakland Raiders spent $31 million last week to sign two members of the Dallas Cowboys' supporting cast (Russell Maryland and Larry Brown) -- but it is watering down the product the league is putting on the field.The era of the great team is rapidly ending.Despite all the salary cap manipulation that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has done to keep his stars, even he can't stop the erosion of the team's depth.

Love it or hate it, there can be no debate about one aspect of the NFL's controversial salary cap: It adds an intriguing dimension to the battle for free agents.In free agency without the cap, a team that makes a mistake often only hurts an owner's wallet.With the cap, a mistake doesn't hurt a team's bottom line because there's a limit of what a team can spend. But when a team spends too much -- or sometimes not enough -- it can have a major impact on the team on the field. A dollar spent in one area is a dollar the team can't spend in another.

HAMILTON, Ontario -- Looking to end the owners' lockout, NHL players last night offered to accept limits on rookie salaries, calling the move a "significant concession."The offer, coupled with a request that owners drop their demand for all-encompassing salary controls, came after a seven-hour negotiating session in Buffalo, N.Y.Bob Goodenow, the NHL Players Association's executive director, declined to elaborate."Conversation, hopefully, leads to progress," he said. "It's important to talk and extend the process.

Buddy Ryan is still going his own way.Ryan, the cantankerous new coach of the Arizona Cardinals, can always be counted on to disagree with the conventional wisdom.As the NFL prepares to begin its 75th season -- better known as The First Salary Cap Season -- there have been so many complaints about the new system that commissioner Paul Tagliabue has issued a gag order forbidding criticism of the cap.That's why it figures that Ryan thinks the cap is a nifty idea."I like the salary cap myself because it puts everybody on a level playing field," he said.

Owner Art Modell is about to change the way the Ravens do business."We're going to address the problem of the imbalance in our payroll," Modell said yesterday. "We're going to straighten it out."The imbalance was illustrated in a salary survey compiled by the NFL Players Association that showed the Ravens have more than one-third of their 1997 salary cap total committed to just five players including one, Andre Rison, who is no longer on the team.They have contracts with salary cap numbers of $3.9 million for safety Eric Turner, $3.2 million for defensive end Rob Burnett, $2.9 million for offensive tackle Tony Jones and $2.8 million for wide receiver Michael Jackson.

The Washington Redskins have offered to trade linebacker Wilber Marshall, a team source said last night.The Redskins have told teams they're willing to trade Marshall because of salary-cap considerations.The Redskins designated Marshall a "franchise player," which means he can't negotiate with any other team and must be offered an average of the top five highest-paid linebackers, which is $1.635 million. He made $1.3 million last year.But Marshall can still hold out for any figure he wants, and he's expected to ask for close to $3 million.