Based on information that has come out from the settlement negotiations, the proposed salary cap for this year will be $120.375 million per team, with an additional $22.025 million per team allocated for benefits. There will be a per-team minimum spend of 89 percent of the cap and the league will be required to achieve a league-wide average cash spend of 99 percent of the cap this year.
The increased minimum and minimum cash spend are big wins for the players. Not all teams spend to the cap, so the minimum is more critical than the maximum in determining true earnings for the players. In 2009, the average team payroll was $106.8 million, according to USA Today, and the salary cap was $128 million per team. This means that the league wide average was only 83 percent of the cap.
For the teams that are big spenders and are already over the cap going into this year, they will have some flexibility in meeting their cap number. Teams will be allowed to use $3.5 million toward veteran salaries that would otherwise be earmarked for performance-based pay. In addition, teams will be allowed to borrow $3 million from a future year’s salary cap. These two provisions will allow teams to stretch the 2011 salary cap from $120.375 million to $126.875 million.
General Managers, club executives and team “cap-ologists” met on Friday in Atlanta for five hours to begin going over the details for the cap and free agency to lay out their plans of attack for the coming flurry of signing once an agreement is completed.
