Thursday, January 15, 1998

Salary cap under heavy scrutiny

By Jean-Jacques Taylor

The Dallas Morning News

(KRT)

IRVING, Texas - Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones said Wednesday he doesn't have a good indication of how much the NFL's 1998 salary cap will increase.

But he hopes it's significant enough to help out his salary cap-strapped team.

Dallas, which has 38 players under contract, already has $33.9 million committed toward just nine players in 1998. Cornerback Deion Sanders ($7.5 million cap figure) and quarterback Troy Aikman ($6.8) will count more than $14 million next season.

"We just don't know how much it's going to go up right now," Stephen Jones said. "Anything I told you would be pure speculation."

Team owners spent much of Wednesday's meeting to discuss how much the salary cap will increase. Jones said he expects to have a good idea of how much the cap will increase by the end of the week, and a meeting next Thursday in San Diego should provide even more insight, he said.

The 1998 salary cap must be in place before the free agency period begins Feb. 13. The Cowboys still have to sign several free agents and their 1998 draft picks. Owner Jerry Jones has said he expects the Cowboys to sign at least one free-agent guard and possibly two.

Stephen Jones has said the Cowboys also would like to re-sign free-agent free safety Brock Marion, who led the Cowboys in tackles.

Jones said the Cowboys could use their franchise tag on Marion. The franchise tag allows a team to sign a player for the average of the top five salaries at his position.

That means the Cowboys would have to sign Marion to a contract worth about $2.9 million per year.

Jones expects a big increase from the $41.45 million salary cap in 1997 because the NFL finalized a four-network, eight-year television contract Tuesday worth at least $17.6 billion.

The NFL salary cap is expected to jump by several million because the players receive 62.5 percent of the teams' gross revenues, which means for every $10 million in shared revenue a team receives, $6.25 milion goes to the players.

Most of that money comes from the television contract.

Fox paid $550 million per season to televise NFC games, CBS paid $500 million per season to televise AFC games, ABC paid $550 million per season for Monday Night Football, and ESPN paid $600 million per season for the Sunday night football package.

All four deals are guaranteed for five years, although the NFL reserves the right to ask the networks to renegotiate the rights fees for the final three years.

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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