Back from a little hiatus. I’ve been interviewing, hired and am training a new assistant here at the office. Jan-Feb and this month have been busier in the local real estate and mortgage market than I’ve seen in the last three years, so hopefully that’s the beginning of the recovery I’ve been seeing in different parts of town.

On the NFL front, I have to admit even I’ve been confused about this agreement, so I’m posting a 20 question and answer session to hopefully help us all understand. I found this on another website to help explain what is going on.

Q. Why is the salary cap going away?

Since the early 1990s, the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the players’ union consistently has included a final year in which the salary cap disappears. The goal of the provision was to encourage the parties to get a new deal done more than a year before the current arrangement expires.

Previously, the strategy has worked. At no other time has the NFL even come within a year of an uncapped season. In 2006, the league and the union negotiated a new deal on the eve of the last season with a salary cap.

So this development and most if not all of its peculiar consequences have been contemplated for nearly two decades. Before now, however, no one wanted the cap to go away.