Many things stink about the league’s decision to strip a total of $46 million in cap space from the Redskins and Cowboys for treating the uncapped year as, well, an uncapped year.
Here’s the latest. As we already know, the agreement regarding the imposition of the penalties was struck between the NFL Management Council Executive Committee and the NFLPA, making it a revision of the CBA without a vote of the league’s owners or union leadership. That deal happened even though Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was and still is a member of the NFL Management Council Executive Committee.
It’s one thing for the so-called CEC to use its delegation of authority to work out side agreements with the union. It’s quite another for the CEC to do so without knowledge of one of the men who has secured membership on the CEC.
The NFL would be wise to clean up this mess as soon as possible. Jones and Redskins owner Daniel Snyder are ready to fight -- and the last thing the NFL needs is escalation of a $46 million fracas into something that could harm the long-term interests of a multi-billion-dollar operation.
For the league, the sooner this goes away, the better. The longer it hangs around, the more likely that some entity like Congress will become intrigued by the reality that the arrangement is aimed at masking, and supporting, illegal collusion.
