He's just another clown who's working to price the game out of reach of real fans.

Jerry Jones is lucky that Aikman panned out or he would have been a laughing stock as an owner.

Can't entirely disagree with you there. But at least he spends a lot more on his team than most owners (like ours). He would pocket as much as he could if he truly didn't care one iota about winning. And pricing the game out of reach of the real fans ain't a good business move. Though if he calculates the cost, probability and likelihood of his transactions and the bottom line's a little higher...

I don't care how much an owner spends. I care more how they spend. Daniel Snyder spends like a drunken sailor and I would never want him to own a team I cared about.

He also has one of the sweetest lease agreements in the NFL and continues to con the city out of money, and then he doesn't pump that money into the team--makes a bunch of cheapskate moves on problem players and markets it to his fans as "giving guys a second chance."

It doesn't matter if you have other business ventures. It's not hard for even bad NFL owners to make money regardless of the market you operate in. It's one of the sweetest investments in the world. And by the way, given that the team was handed down from his Dad, it's not like he's investing his hard-earned dollars into the team. He's taking over an investment. That's a hell of a lot different.

That's easy to say until you see the alternative. It happens in baseball all the time. People want to crucify the Yankees, when one of the biggest problems is that there are too many owners who under-spend on their teams because they're more interested in making profit than in putting the effort to field a World Series champion.

It sucks that you have to put a salary floor incentive to get owners to spend.

Think about your luxury boxes. Expensive seats. Who sits there? Rich guys who leave in the 4th quarter. Unfortunately, most of these owners are there to make money. Jerry Jones sucks as a spender, but I appreciate that he cares about winning, even if that's because winning leads to more money in his pockets. His problem is that he's so obsessed with winning that he micro-manages, the ssame problem Steinbreiner and Cuban always had.

These small market owners aren't making nearly as much as you seem to think, and if the salary floor gets too high, teams like Detroit and Buffalo will eventually be working in the red.

Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder and Jerry Richardson, among others, are killing the golden goose.

There's no doubt that richer NFL owners have it easier in that they can fail and still turn a profit. But let me ask why it's such a big deal for an owner to operate in the red. You bring up Detroit and Buffalo. Two teams that have had almost 10 straight losing seasons. Do these owners deserve to make money for doing shitty work? I would love for those guys to operate in the red so they can be fired.

There are a handful of owners I genuinely feel sorry for. Minnesota because they are hamstrung by a shitty stadium, and Jacksonville because it's a shitty market. The others? The fact that Buffalo can post that many losing seasons in a row and still keep the ownership tells you they're not doing too bad.

And I'm not at all convinced that it's easy at all to operate in the red. They share a shitload of revenue. And the majority of them are getting sweetheart deals from taxpayers and the city to keep the team there. Not only that, but they're building them expensive stadiums on the taxpayer dime that gives them the license to charge even higher prices and make more money.

So no, I have a very hard time believing owners are struggling. How many times have you seen an NFL owner sell their franchise because of money? Even really, really bad franchises with poor attendance numbers? Sweetest gig in America--even when you're horribly bad, you can still stay largely in the black.

Lost in all of this debate: This is far and away Mellinger's best column ever.

I'd rather have some cap to prevent a QB from leaving here to go to NY like baseball.

You speak as if you've seen the numbers. Nope you're just talking out of your ass again.

You haven't liked his stuff?

Buffalo's owner has owned the team since the very beginning. As soon as Wilson dies the team is going to Toronto.

Daniel Snyder jerks off to Mark Cubans picture everyday.

No. The Star has pretty much been dead since Whitlock left.

Edit: But I'm looking for a hero.