[Sport] Caps and Drafts

April 29 is the NFL Draft.

Here is the draft order from NFL.com

	Team	Record	Strength of Schedule
1	Houston Texans	2-14	.535
2	New Orleans Saints	3-13	.523
3	Tennessee Titans	4-12	.512
4	New York Jets	4-12	.527
5	Green Bay Packers	4-12	.531
6	San Francisco 49ers	4-12	.539
7	Oakland Raiders	4-12	.539
8	Buffalo Bills	5-11	.500
9	Detroit Lions	5-11	.504
10	Arizona Cardinals	5-11	.508
11	St. Louis Rams	6-10	.484
12	Cleveland Browns	6-10	.508
13	Baltimore Ravens	6-10	.523
14	Philadelphia Eagles	6-10	.531
15	Atlanta Falcons	8-8	.492
16	Miami Dolphins	9-7	.457
17	Minnesota Vikings	9-7	.484
18	Dallas Cowboys	9-7	.523
19	San Diego Chargers	9-7	.559
20	Kansas City Chiefs	10-6	.504
21	New England Patriots	10-6	.508
22	Washington Redskins	10-6	.539
23	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	11-5	.449
24	Cincinnati Bengals	11-5	.477
25	New York Giants	11-5	.492
26	Chicago Bears	11-5	.457
27	Carolina Panthers	11-5	.449
28	Jacksonville Jaguars	12-4	.465
29	Denver Broncos	13-3	.500
30	Indianapolis Colts	14-2	.457
31	Seattle Seahawks	13-3	.430
32	Pittsburgh Steelers	11-5	.492

The Raiders and the 49ers flipped a coin to see who would draft first. The 49ers won. Just as an aside, this will be the lowest that the Patriots have drafted since 2002 when they also had the 21^st pick and took TE Daniel Graham (the first pick that year was QB David Carr). [CORRECTION: in 2003 New England had pick #13 through a trade and took DE Ty Warren]

Speaking of brilliant systems that make the NFL the greatest money-making professional sports competition in the world, the Warriors are still in hot water over salary cap breaches in the Australian NRL competition. So, naturally, people are calling for the cap to be scrapped. These people are idiots.

The NRL has had two major breaches of the cap in the past four years (in 2002 the Bulldogs were stripped of competition points after major breaches were discovered during the season. The Warriors need to be penalised but should not be docked points especially because the breaches are for the 2005 season.

Why would you want to get rid of a tool that has made the NRL into a very competitive tournament? In the last eight years the NRL has had seven different winners! No, we can’t have that, how horrible.

Rugby’s Super 12 competition (which is the closest rugby equivalent) had three different winners in ten years! Unsurprisingly there is no salary cap or player sharing in the Super 12 (nor the Super 14).

The salary cap, draft and free agency system means that teams can be incredibly competitive (as I have ranted and ranted about on this blog for many pages before). All the NRL needs is a completely transparent system of player payments. And I mean transparent. It needs to be public record. The players also have to be aware if the club is doing anything dodgy to pay them, because no player wants to be the one in the middle of a scandal.

Get rid of the salary cap: ridiculous. Send the players involved to bottom ranked teams on the offending team’s money: ridiculous. Just live with it and punish those who don’t comply.

Speaking of all of this (at this point I should say that I am just rambling and free associating this post) the NFL may have an uncapped season in 2007. This will throw the NFL into turmoil. Owners are the only ones who will win in the deal. Fans definitely won’t.

That’ll do. Please check out my podcast for more sports related stuff.