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A Cap Question from the Uninformed


I like football, you know, on the field.

I don't know anything about the admin side of the game, so I ask the following question fully aware of the ignorance it likely evidences; yet I must know.

What prevents a team (say, the Texans) from signing a player (say, Mario) to a contract with a large guaranteed amount spread out over an unrealistically long contract term? Before you argue that no player would wait 20 years for his money, the team (or some related entity created for this purpose) would then enter into a factoring agreement with the player to purchase the rights to the contract payments for a lump sum.

The goal is, of course, to break up a $40MM guaranteed contract into manageable $1.5-$2MM annual cap hits while paying the player his $30-$35MM (there's a discount for the present value of the money), while still getting the player his money over a shorter period of time. While 20 years of liability seems burdensome, a) its a commercial decision for the team, and b) since they own the rights to the payments, they can always agree with themselves to restructure the contract in any year where they have excess cap space to pay off the contract early.

I can't have been the first to think of this, so why is it not done? Is it prohibited by the league or are there other considerations that make it unworkable?




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