NFL

It creates problems for sure.

Its very chicken vs. the egg.

On the one hand, the Kansas City Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, the very best quarterback in the league. Because he is so good, he led them to their first Super Bowl appearance since the late 1960s. And he did so while on a team friendly rookie contract.

After the 2019 season, Mahomes rookie contract was set to expire the team had to pay him the type of money it takes to re-sign not only the best QB in the league, but one that had just won you the Super Bowl as well. 

As a result, Kansas City had less available salary cap money to pay the rest of the team and that hurts depth. You basically only have enough money to pay your first team players. So when Kansas City lost their two top offensive linemen during the playoffs, their replacements were bargain aisle reserves and Patrick Mahomes spent the entire Super Bowl running for his life and taking seriously hard hits from the Tampa Bay defense who bombarded him all game long.

The same thing happened in Seattle where their overall team depth took a big dip after the team had to re-sign QB Russell Wilson after his rookie contract expired. Seattle went from being a top Super Bowl contender, to a team with a top 5 QB but less depth on the roster and Seattle faded as the 2020 season wore on and injuries to first team players mounted up.

With a team like the Chicago Bears, they overspent cap money on signing big money players on their defense, leaving little cap room to spend on the offensive side of the ball. So you have a team with a GREAT defense, but with an offense that can barely put up any points on the board.

The salary cap was put in place to allow for parity and allow teams from smaller markets - like Green Bay, Cincinnati and Buffalo - to compete with the deep pocketed big market teams in Dallas, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. 

But it certainly tasks your front office accounting staff to find a way to spread your salary cap money across a roster of more than 60 players and still find a way to pay the expected salaries of top talent on both the offense and defense, as well as have 2 or 3 levels of reserve depth at every position in a sport where on every single play there is a risk of a season ending injury to any first team player.

Its becomes even more difficult when you have grey bearded players like Big Ben or Tom Brady or Drew Brees who stay in the league for close to two full decades and demand ever increasing pay rises with every new contract renewal.   

One of the reason that the New England Patriots were so successful for so long was that their approach was to pay QB Tom Brady but never over spend on high priced veteran free agents for the rest of the roster. They would bring in free agents who were once super stars but now were in the twilights of their career and willing to accept less money to play out their final season or two on a team that was a perennial Super Bowl contender.

Think of it as New England never spending a lot of money to buy a new Ford and drive it for 10 years. They instead buy a used BMW with a lot miles on it off a bargain used car lot for a good price and drive it for a couple of years until its ready for the scrap heap, then they go out and buy another. 

Any touch on a referree is automatic dismissal from the field, no argument. And yeah, I wish they would do it in other sports.

It would certainly calm things down in football/soccer, especially because you are sent off, and would not be replaceable.

And it makes sense to be that strict cos the refs are usually half the size and twice the age of these huge young men in full body armour.

Yes please

That would be an even better coup than Deshaun Watson.