The Lions' Pride

I'm sure every front office saw the possibilities. But only few have the resources to take advantage of it.

What's the risk? Outside of wasting millions of dollars...which I'm not sure Jerry Jones really cares about anyway. We know Dan Snyder doesn't care about blowing tens of millions on whoever.

As far as I can tell, the point of the cap free year was to motivate the owners to get a CBA done (note that the original CBA wasn't intended to give a cap-free year - it was only implemented because the owners thought they were getting screwed and thus struck down the last CBA). Just like the extended years necessary for players to become free agents would help motivate the players to get a deal done. That's actually what happened in 2006 - the potential for an uncapped year helped motivate the extension of the CBA.

Either there is a cap or there isn't. Many teams "restructure" contracts when they have cap space open this year but may be in a crunch next year or swap salary dollars for a signing/roster bonus to defray the cost over a series of years. Moving your expenses into a front loaded contract in a year where there is no cap only makes sense.

For the people saying these two rich owners what the hell do you think the rest of the NFL owners are?

But since they didn't get a deal done and there was an uncapped year, they have to live with the consequences.
One of the classic examples used by a prominent law professor at Penn State who still teaches today is:
"Hey (Student A) how much money do you have in your wallet?"
Student A: "about 20 dollars"
Professor: "I say in the spirit of democracy... let's have a vote, who votes that Student A must give us all of his money?"
(Everyone raises hand)

That is still against the law and violates Student A's rights. Just because the rest of the class (owners) agreed that it is better that they take Student A's (Cowboys and Skins) money doesn't mean that they are in the right because "majority rules."

That is essentially what is happening in this case: The owners voted/agreed/whatever that they wouldn't spend a lot during the uncapped year. That way, players salaries were kept low, and market value of the players wouldn't increase as much in the future. Apparently 4 teams said "to hell with that" and did what was perfectly legal and 100% within their rights to do, by front-loading contracts, getting rid of players, etc.
Just because a bunch of people essentially raised their hands to some agreement doesn't mean that there was a rule regarding the action. The fact is that there wasn't any. And therefore, the Cowboys and Redskins haven't broken any rule at all.
The only entity that has actually done anything wrong is the rest of the NFL owners themselves who illegally colluded to not spend so much money on the players in the uncapped season.

You can "warn" someone all you want, unless there is a rule stating they can't do it, then you can't punish them for doing so.
If 4 local gas station owners come together at dinner one night and all agree to keep their gas prices under $4 per gallon, and then 1 month later, two of the owners price their gas at $4.15 per gallon, what are the other 2 owners gonna do? Sue them?
No. The 2 owners priced over $4 dollars didn't break any rules or laws.

The 2 owners priced over $4 probably wouldn't get much business either, but that's besides the point. It's kind of moot because the NFL itself isn't just a loose agreement between owners. It's an organization that, among many other things, has a purpose of maintaining competitive balance among the teams. They warned that circumventing the salary cap will have consequences and it did.

And guess what, they can warn all they want, but unless they have rules against a certain action, they can't punish someone for doing it.
The CBA was the agreement for competitive balance, and the uncapped year was a part of that!
So the Cowboys and Redskins were in perfect compliance with the terms of the CBA. But a bunch of other owners b*tched and moaned, and agreed to "punish" these two teams.
I don't see how anyone doesn't see how messed up that is.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/03/12/nflpa-agreed-to-cowboysredskins-salary-cap-sanctions/

Read that.
And then this
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/03/12/cowboys-redskins-say-they-complied-with-salary-cap-in-2010/

Basically, the Cowboys and Redskins were the only two teams/owners who actually played by the rules and didn't agree to illegally collude against paying the players a lot of money.

And no, a verbal agreement can not override the terms of a Collective Bargaining Agreement. That is absolutely ludicrous and simply not the case.
Seriously, there is no possible way you can read those two articles and conclude that the Redskins and Cowboys are in the wrong here with a straight face.

The NFL basically bribed Demaurice Smith and the NFLPA to accept their illegal collusion by punishing the Cowboys and Redskins in order to raise the salary cap number in an election year for Smith.

This can get very VERY ugly if Jones and Snyder stand firm.

Yet what you fail to understand is that there was no salary cap to circumvent....
But to play along, even if there wasn't and the NFL still wanted to ensure "fair competition," they still APPROVED every single contract that was signed/restructured at the time.
Every single contract had to be approved by the league office. And these contracts were approved by the league office at the time of their agreements.
That is why your NHL example simply doesn't apply. If it was because of fair competition, then the NFL League Office would've shot down the contracts back in 2010, but they didn't.
This was done simply to add to this year's salary cap so Demaurice Smith can be re-elected next year as Head I the NFLPA. The NFL basically bribed the NFLPA into agreeing to this to raise the salary cap and is daring Jones and Snyder to sue and in turn hurt their own business (the NFL) in the process.

I look at it like this I commute to work and in a certain section i do 60 in a section I believe has no speed limit. The speed limit is not clearly posted but I believe it to be 55. I emailed my notion to drive over the speed limit to the state police who okayed it. Then the two guys that do 40, the ones I pass all the time they work in a building across the street. One day they bitch about my driving, all of the sudden I'm charged with 375 speeding tickets based on me commuting 5 days a week for two years. I have to pay those douche bags that drive slow. I was okayed to do what I was doing by the law but then they just decided they would backdate the enforcement of a non existent speed limit. Because a couple drivers couldn't keep up.

Perhaps what you don't know is: in the latest CBA agreement this past summer, the NFL dropped their threat to penalize teams that used the uncapped year to "dump contracts" in order to hasten the deal and get the league started again.
But now that the salary cap was projected to be flat, the NFLPA leadership needed a way to raise the cap number this year, and the league was happy to oblige because the Cowboys and Redskins didn't go along with their little good ole big network "agreement," and the rest of the owners were happy to take an extra 1.6 million in cap space.
This was already mentioned in the links I posted above in a previous post.

I saw that in an article, but didn't see it supported anywhere in particular. Even if they did drop that threat, is that fair competition? I don't believe so.

Last I knew, Jones and Snyder were the ones who always instigate the "good old boy" agreements. They're the ones leading the charge on the "majority rules" attitude of the NFL owners. If they're getting punished because of "good old boy" agreements, they're the ones who created that attitude among the owners.

And by the way, going back to my comments about the precedent in the NHL. I was making a general point that this sort of punishment has precedent. The NHL did what it did despite no rules being broken, and its decision was upheld. The NFL is doing the same. Both are meant to maintain competition.

And to Huss: who said they couldn't keep up? People seem to be making that up without any support.