The teams threw most of their income into a pot and divvied it up equally. As former Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell has been saying for decades, NFL owners are "32 fat-cat Republicans who vote socialist," with the number growing as the NFL has expanded.
The system leveled the playing field and allowed teams to thrive in small markets, even in the preposterously small market of Green Bay, Wis., which makes Kansas City, Mo., look like Tokyo.
In recent years, some of the richer owners have wanted to get away from that system. The national money we can still share, the group led by Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and Dan Snyder of Washington have been saying, but local revenue streams we've developed on our own, we should be able to keep.
This threatened to create a two-tiered system, because there just aren't the same opportunities to create local revenue in smaller markets as there are in larger ones.
You will notice, baseball fans, if I may take one of my hobbyhorses for a walk around the paddock, that the problem of competitive imbalance, of haves and have-nots, arose in the NFL with a salary cap firmly in place. It arose when the revenue-sharing system began to break down.
Interestingly, the NFL Players Association wanted greater revenue sharing. It wanted more money thrown into the middle and divvied up, so that all 32 teams could afford to pay high salaries. The baseball union has fought revenue sharing for years because it wants a few teams to get super rich and set the market by paying super-high salaries.
Jones and his cabal, incredibly, wanted to move toward the baseball model. It would have benefited him, in the sense that climbing to the top deck of a sinking ship benefits a person.
The impasse led the NFL to the brink of the NHL model. That is, let's all get together and flush.
If an agreement couldn't be reached, 2006 would have been played under the same salary cap as 2005, and 2007, the last year of the old contract, would have been an uncapped year. Union chief Gene Upshaw had said that once the salary cap went away, the players would never accept it again.
Famous last words, as hockey players can tell you, but still. Upshaw had begun to take steps to have the union decertify itself to prevent a lockout in 2008. Had that scenario played out, the '08 season could have been lost, NHL style, while the two sides fought in court.
Keep in mind, we're talking about introducing this chaos into the most successful sports enterprise in American history during the most successful period in its own history. The stupidity of going down that road would have made the NHL owners look like a Mensa meeting.
I think the NFL can do almost anything it puts its mind to, but that would have been a hell of a trick.
Commissioner Paul Tagliabue's dogged efforts kept the talks going through multiple deadlines, and he was finally able to persuade the wealthier owners to modify and accept the union's proposal, which called for players to get a lower percentage of a greater pool of shared revenue, a total increase for the players.
Both sides seem happy with the agreement. They should be. They almost became the NHL. Near-death experiences have a way of making you look on the bright side.
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com.
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