To the general public, it's arcane stuff with numbers too numbing to get through.
To the Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles, to name two NFL teams, it's a matter of life and death.To give it a name, call it "the salary cap dodge," the agreement between the league and its players union that gives teams until Dec. 23 to extend the contracts of players in ways that will save them money under next year's salary cap.
Here's how it works:
If a player currently under contract reaches agreement on a new one before the deadline, his bonuses, including his signing bonus, will be pro-rated to include this season, when there's no cap. So a three-year deal with a $1.5 million signing bonus would save a team $500,000 toward the cap next year.
That's significant. The cap is likely to be somewhere between $32 million and $35 million, meaning that $500,000 will pay a starting cornerback or guard that might have to be cut or allowed to go elsewhere.
So the Lions strive to sign Barry Sanders, knee injury and all, before the end of the season and the Eagles offer Seth Joyner and Clyde Simmons $10 million over three years if they sign now. Simmons, for one, might be advised to take it - he's been bothered all season by injuries and without Reggie White on the opposite side of the line his sack total has plummeted from a league-leading 19 to three.
But others aren't in such a rush to sign.
"I doubt very much we'll do anything by the deadline," says Leigh Steinberg, the agent for Troy Aikman of the Cowboys, who's been negotiating with Jerry Jones for a contract extension before the season started.
Aikman, the Super Bowl MVP and the only superstar quarterback under 30, is making just over $1 million this year, putting more than 20 quarterbacks ahead of him.
Why wouldn't the Cowboys sign him now?
Because "front-loading" the contract with something like $8 million in bonuses this year - that's the figure Steinberg is discussing - would still have to be pro-rated over the length of the deal. That would take out a couple of million a year over four years . . . not counting a salary in, say, the $6 million range.
But the deal will happen because the Cowboys have to balance Aikman and Emmitt Smith to pay their other young stars - Ken Norton, Erik Williams, Kevin Smith and Leon Lett come to mind.
So the guys likely to sign in the next week or so are likely to be your average left guard or your average right cornerback. And they're likely to be with teams that know what they're doing.