a week from now ... super bowl xliv will be history... the post-game celebrations and analysis will be fading into the background .... the new buzzwords in the nfl offices in new york ... and in the hallways of the worldwide leader will be ... "final league year" and "uncapped year"

the "final league year" of the current nfl's collective bargaining agreement begins on march 5th ... a month before, there are no signs a new agreement is even being discussed ... what is being talked about is how teams can/will do business without a new agreement ... commissioner goodell pretty much confirmed this week in miami a new agreement is not imminent ... and that 2010-11 will be an "uncapped year"

assuming 2010-11 is to be played under the old agreement ... in the "final league year" of that agreement, there are changes to the rules of engagement

• there will be no salary cap ... there is also no salary floor ... daniel snyder (redskins) can throw away more money than ever before and mike brown (bengals) can save more than he ever thought possible


• players in their 4th or 5th year of service who would have become "unrestricted free agents" will now be classified as "restricted free agents" ... down in foxboro, logan mankins and stephen gostkowski will fall into this category


• "the final eight" ... teams who reached the conference playoff weekend ... teams like indianapolis and the ny jets jets jets ... will only be able to sign unrestricted free agents to replace a free agent lost ... the new player's salary cannot exceed the departed player's wage ... there are several built-in exceptions for the teams that lost on conference playoff weekend


• teams will have available a 2nd "transition player" option ... meaning a team can continue to tag 1 player their "franchise player" ... and tag 2 others as "transition players"


• teams will will be relieved of their obligation to contribute to a number of player benefit programs


• the league will have the option of maintaining or eliminating the pool of dollars for 1st year players ... keeping it would maintain the slotting/sliding scale structure but would also assure another year of huge dollar contracts for 1st round draft picks ... eliminating it would eliminate any structure for signing rookies and would create a climate for record contract dollars ... in other words, chaos would ensue

should be an interesting off-season in the nfl