Help with money question(s).

[DougWyatt]

This isn't really a question specific to my league, but I'll word it as such "for example".

I am getting ready to start a new league, but have a couple questions to help my understanding of the game.

Salary question -

I am starting my league in the early 1900s, so I'd like to have the money start at the minimum (10,000,000). I would also like to control my salary cap; as the normal settings give bigger numbers than I enjoy working with. Plan is to change the "normal" money increase to approx. 5% for the first 50 years & 2.5% until current - at which point I'll go from there. This would put me at about 200 million in 2006 - right where I want to be. (IE .. For the first TV deal that would be a "5", and work my way up to the 2000 or so deal at 46).

Anyway, my question - concern - is will my leagues players know what the cap is, know what the anticipated cap increase is; and expect appropriate pay increases - or will their yearly increases exceed my salary cap increases and eventually lead to league money problems ?

Also, the rookies - since those are the ones I can't control. Will the rooks pay increases reflect league pay increases ?


Thanks

[Narcizo]

If you start with $10m and you'll want to fix the cap increase rate by setting the minimum and maximum to the same. The amount of cap space decides minimum salary, from which all contract negotiations are decided. I'm 90% sure that players don't "know" what future cap increases are going to be - their future demands are based solely on the level of the current cap, but with an extrapolated increase in wages.

So when you increase the rate of cap increase there will be a period when people will have more cap room as they will have players on contracts signed under the lower cap increase period. So it´s probably better not to let people know when and by how much you intend to raise the cap rate.

Incidentally starting at $10m will make caps easier to manage as a lot of players will be asking for just $10k bonus money, which, if spread over more than one year will result in a 0 cap hit each year. (Bonus money is always rounded down when divided by the number of years and the lowest unit is $10k).