Jerry Jones, NFL Antichrist

Peter King has an excellent piece up at the Sports Illustrated website about how Dallas' trade for Roy Williams was the opening salvo in the upcoming NFL labor war. Jerry Jones wants to turn the Cowboys into football's New York Yankees (and in so many ways they already are). He is pushing for no spending limits and no salary caps. I don't think this will lead to success but that is beside the point. Williams' new contract is incredibly frontloaded. Why? It is quite possible that the owners will pull out of the current collective bargaining agreement after the 2010 season. That season there will not be a salary cap. The players' union have stated that if there is no salary cap that season, they will never submit to one again.

Jones is assuming this is true. He has several heavily front-loaded contracts that would lead to an enormous salary cap burden after 2010. He is betting that there will be no salary cap and is acting on it. He thinks he can win now by adding all these big-name players and won't have to pay later. If there is a salary cap, the Cowboys will be a terrible team for several years as they won't be able to sign any players.

The problem with this is that a lot of NFL owners don't want this to happen. They want a salary cap. But Jones, along with a few other of the richest owners, are trying to change the league to help themselves out. They don't want the parity of the last 20 years; instead, they hope for a league where the richest teams can buy themselves championships. But the majority of owners won't accept this and are likely to lock out the players for the 2011 season rather than play with no salary cap.

Thus Jerry Jones just took the NFL on a big ol'step to a work stoppage.

Thanks Jerry.