epted some form of caps. Both NFL football and, surprisingly, NBA basketball have a version of salary caps in place that the players agreed upon. The National Basketball Association was the first professional sport in recent decades to accept salary caps. The NBA players' union willingly accepted the limits in 1983. The NFL players' union followed about a decade later.
While players in the NBA and NFL have freely accepted ceilings of their salaries, players in Major League Baseball and the NHL are steadfastly refusing any such limits. Baseball players official struck on August 12 to fight caps. Hockey players have been locked out of their jobs for at least part of the season for the same reason. There are even new grumbling in the National Basketball Association as owners have suggested toughening the existing salary caps. The lack of accord among the four professional sports is understandable, given that "salary caps" means something unique to each sport.
Basketball, for instance, has what is referred to as a "soft cap." In theory, every team is required to hold its expenditures for salaries to 53% of an agreed-upon level of revenues. But this limit is rather easy to
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