I found this and thought ya'll might be interested.  It explains a lot about 
working around the cap.  Hope this is appropriate for this list.

Andy
Hail to the Redskins!

By Ira Miller
SportsLine USA Pro Football Writer
February 25, 1997

You can't pick up a newspaper sports section or see any news about the NFL these days without hearing these two dreaded words.

Salary cap.

This, supposedly, controls everything that every team and every player in the NFL does.

Team has to get rid of a player? Blame the salary cap.

Can't sign a free agent? Blame the salary cap.

Veteran wants too much money to re-sign? It's the salary cap.

TO LISTEN TO SOME OF the people in the league, you'd think Salary Cap was the name of some team's general manager.

"Hello, Mr. Cap.''

"Just call me Salary.''

Well, it is a convenient excuse.

So if the cap is such a problem, explain this one to me.

Earlier this week, the San Francisco 49ers were $281,000 under the cap. Then they signed free agent guard Kevin Gogan (photo) to a six-year, $12.5 million contract, handing over a $2.6 million signing bonus.

Next, they re-negotiated the contract of running back Terry Kirby. He was supposed to get $1 million this year. Instead, he's getting $1.2 million.

And after all that?

Did the 49ers bust the salary cap?

Hardly.

REMEMBER, THEY BEGAN $281,000 UNDER the cap. After signing Gogan and re-negotiating Kirby, they were still $114,000 under the cap.

Amazing, isn't it?

Without question, the salary cap has put some restraints on owners who might otherwise simply throw their checkbooks at players; they come close to this as it is. But last season, when the cap was set at $40,753,000, all but three of the 30 NFL teams spent more than $41 million on their player salaries.

The New York Giants, of all teams, were the top spenders with $60.4 million. Nine other teams spent more than $50 million: the Jets, Dallas, Buffalo, San Francisco, New Orleans, New England, Denver, Oakland and Chicago. You could easily make the argument many of these teams clearly didn't get their money's worth, but that's another issue.

But isn't the salary cap supposed to rein these teams in?

Well, it does. To a point.

Very early on in this business, some smart agents realized that signing bonuses were pro-rated against the cap. Football people always have been stingy about giving away guaranteed money, unlike baseball where most contracts are guaranteed. But signing bonuses are a form of guaranteed money, and players began demanding more and more of them once there was competition for their services.

For some reason, the club owners did not figure on this when they negotiated the collective bargaining agreement. They thought a cap meant a limit. They want to put the genie back in the bottle -- they'll kick it around at one of their meetings not far away -- but without the players' agreement, it's a little late for that.

NOT LONG AFTER AGENTS DISCOVERED signing bonuses, agents and teams began discovering the magic of re-negotiations. Once smart teams like the 49ers and Cowboys began bumping up against the cap, even with the signing money pro-rated, they realized they could slice the pie even thinner. Re-negotiate a contract. Say a player was due to earn $2 million. Have him sign a new deal, adding another year at the end. Never mind that by then he'll be 53 years old. Call most of the $2 million a signing bonus, cutting "base salary'' to near the minimum. Presto, the money is pro-rated, and the cap number goes down.

By now, you get the picture.

Signing bonuses and re-negotiations enable teams to spread these salaries out over a virtually endless period of time. It's like a big Ponzi scheme. If the TV money ever dries up, and the cap stops increasing, eventually you will run into a pinch. But until then, teams that want to sign players -- and that's most teams -- merely perform this sleight of hand with the numbers and send the cap money off into the future.

It's not unlike someone who continually pays off only the minimum on his credit cards, letting the balance accrue and the interest pile up far out into the future. Except if you do that, you eventually have to pay. In the NFL, they expect rising TV rights to bail them out.

Which brings us back to the point of all this.

There is hardly any team in the league that can not sign a particular player, regardless of its alleged cap status, if it really wants the player. Some signings do take more work than others. The Miami Dolphins and Baltimore Ravens, for example, are being charged $13 million between them against the cap this year for players no longer on the roster.

That's the downside to pushing these payments out. Cut or trade a player, and all that uncounted money suddenly counts immediately. This is what's known as a mistake hurting twice; you lose the money and later you lose cap room, too.

But there's a lot more of the other going on. Teams can sign the players they want. Next time you hear someone in the NFL say they couldn't sign someone because of the cap or they couldn't afford someone, what they really mean is they didn't want him, or someone else wanted him more. Because teams really can afford what they want.

Mr. Cap is just a convenient scapegoat.