Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
YHowever, it would still give me the willies if two teams made identical offers to a player, and he had a financial incentive to go to the stronger team atop those identical offers.
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1. Luckily there are 32 teams, rather than 2.
2. Let's call the base salary x. The true value of any player, let's call it z, is always unknown. Likewise the value of playoff bonus dollars, let's call this y, for each team is unknown. Teams are trying to maximize z while minimizing x. They have additional motives to maximize y. Players are trying to maximize x + y and want to maximize their z because it maximizes y. It seems like all of the elements for a competitive market are in place. Teams that best estimate z and players perceptions of y will be able to make the optimum offers of x.
In your example, the two teams are offering the same x. Y is perceived to be higher for one of the two teams, thus the estimate of the true ability of the player (z) made by the two teams is different. The team that better estimates z as a reflection of their offer (x + y) will come out better in the end and thus field a more competitive team.
Finally you mention many non-financial factors that would cause a player to select a team, most related to winning, but some related to market size. Since owners now have win to make money, it makes winning even more important since you won't be able to get good players if you don't win.
In many ways, it seems that the proposed NFL model shares aspects of the college model (top players want to go top teams plus trade offs between top team and opportunity to play). It should be noted that there is significant drift among the top college teams from year to year and decade to decade. The top dogs in the NFL would have much more ability to change relative position since the NFL has a parity draft, which colleges do not have.