[manchambo]

Originally Posted by kcgreene

Let me phrase it differently, I didn't word it appropriately as I was in a hurry and legitimately phrased some items poorly, and that is my fault. What I meant to say is that if how you present it is how it occurred, and it wasn't caught it would be fraud. That being said, after having a chance to sit down, and looking at the salary cap, circumvention for the sake of keeping cap numbers artifically low is obvious once I had a chance to look at cap numbers, so feel free to look at the cap information below the fraud explanation too

How the 'deferment' argument would actually be Fraud Explanation in Spoiler.

Spoiler!

I'm saying when public bonds regarding PPP capital issues are involved you never mix accounts. NEVER. Removing money from regular operating expenses (Salaries, rents, etc.) and instead saying that they are non-obligated funds that are available instead for capital projects is misrepresentation of funds when obtaining said bond AKA fraud. That's what your claiming happened by saying that all they did was defer payment to players, that they pulled funds from operating expenses and represented them instead as non-obligated funds that can be applied for capital improvement. What you are suggesting occurred would have been fraud because it is misrepresentation of funds. Obligated funds being portrayed as non-obligated funds.

Bonds aren't just given willy-nilly without people properly checking the situation, meaning that if it did go down as you have presented, and it was simply a deferment of funds and saying that those monies are currently un-obligated (when they are actually part of salaries, an obligation) then someone would have informed them that they couldn't use those monies as that portion because they were shifted over from operating expenses while still technically obligated to such. In this case questions would have arose, and either they would have been told that they can't do that, or fraud would have been discovered.

Since the bond however was obtained, that means that history didn't occur as you're saying, because those monies were used.

And since we don't have any articles suggesting that fraud was discovered after the fact... well... that leaves one option.... that it wasn't the stadium funding story. It was something else.

Now lets talk about the good part, Cap analysis and how Bowlen was full of shit:

What doesn't make sense with the "stadium funding" story is not only were the Broncos punished in December of 2001 for $29M in deferred payments for services rendered from 96 to 98 to Elway and Davis, but also in September of 2004 there was more punishment for further circumvention of the Salary cap. (Not to mention an unnamed agent was fined as well regarding the situation in 2004, almost like an agent was committing to contracts that he knew were illegal in structure and subverted the salary cap)

If it was a simple 'deferment' like you suggest, it would have been a one and done punishment due to a simple "Oh shit, sorry, we didn't realize we couldn't do that" and not being punished twice because of further investigation finding further problems.

And the only person that claimed there was no competitive advantage was Bowlen in a statement. The NFL, the Management Council, and NFL VP of Labor Relations Harold Henderson avoided any questions regarding competitive advantage, probably because they were smart enough to realize that if they basically called 2 Super Bowls bullshit that the legitimacy of the sport comes into question, and thats a whole other can of worms.

Not to mention, in my opinion, some of the most damning evidence:
While Elway's cap charges in his super bowl season were just 2.1M and 2.6M. The only 'elite' QB that wasn't making at least double that was Steve Young (who the 49ers were later found to be in violation of the cap at that time, and his salary was 3.5M)

Let's look solely at Elway and Davis and that $29M (Confirmed numbers per NFL press release) in deferred payments from services rendered from 1996 to 1998.

Terrell Davis total cap hit 96-98: $3,614,695 (https://overthecap.com/player/terrell-davis/7733)
John Elway total cap hit 96-98: $8,831,446 (https://overthecap.com/player/john-elway/7777)

29M - (Davis Cap Hit) - (Elway Cap Hit) = $16,553,859... which is more than enough to almost pay both of those players their entire salary amounts AGAIN. And this is assuming that these numbers are best case scenario and assume all 3 years instead of just 2 years.. If its just 2 years that were circumvented, the numbers get ABSURD.

What this means is that they each were paid about double what they actually counted against the cap. That's not a simple deferment. That's actively subverting the cap.

All I have to say is there's a reason OverTheCap makes an average for superbowl winners and cap without Denver included in it's analysis.. and they explain it as such too.

https://overthecap.com/nfl-salary-ca...champions-part

Now this is an argument. A pretty good one.

I don’t see, however, how you’ve accounted for proration in this.

For example, it was documented that Elway was paid 4.8 million in 1998, even though the cap number was 2.5. He was paid 10 million in 1993 and 8 million in 96.

This isn’t much different from Aikman, who had a salary cap number of 2.5 in 1995, with much larger payments in other years. https://overthecap.com/player/troy-aikman/7728

Davis is a bit different because he was a sixth round pick who signed a five year contract worth just 6.8 million in 1996. It’s hardly surprising his cap number was quite low considering his production. He signed a big extension in 1998 and that’s reflected in the 11.5 million paid to him in 1998. But that had a cap number of 2.4 due to proration.

This was probably the most important component of the championship seasons—getting the best rusher in the league in the sixth round and ridiculously cheap for that reason at first.