The medicine is a potent agent that reduces intraocular pressure, belongs to the group of synthetic prostanoid. The mechanism of action, through which Lumigan reduces intraocular pressure in humans results in increasing of the outflow of intraocular fluid through the trabecular mesh and in increasing of the outflow from the uveoscleral eye. The decrease in intraocular pressure begins around 4 hours after the first application. The maximum effect is achieved within approximately 8-12 hours. The effect lasts at least 24 hours.
Salary Caps 101 (Part II) by: Matt Witting 10 February, 2003 |
"Football
has it. Basketball just got it. Hockey and baseball need it. What
is the "it" I'm referring to? No, not rickets. I am talking
about salary caps. A salary cap is a limit on how much a team can
spend on players. Depending on the loopholes, salary caps have a tremendous
effect on how sports teams recruit and hire its players." To explain salary caps, start with the name. A "salary cap" is not actually a cap on individual salaries but a payroll or cost-of-labor cap. The managers of the various franchises meet and agree to inhibit the labor market by refusing to spend more than a certain, pre-determined amount on payrolls, often less than some franchises already dole out. Some sports do have some sort of cap on individual player salaries, but these are typically set up with a number of exemptions and exceptions to get around the rule. For example: the NHL limits the salary of rookies and players under a certain age but doesn't restrict performance bonuses to them. The NBA has individual salary limits in place but there are so many ways around them that they are rarely a factor (more on this later). The net effect of the types of caps currently in use is to put more money in the hands of owners and less in the hands of labor: the players. There are two broad types of caps: the "soft" cap and the "hard" cap. The NBA features a soft cap (interestingly one of the primary architects of the NBA cap is current NHL commissioner Gary Betteman). The NFL has a hard cap. What's the difference? From the FAQ for the NBA salary cap: "The NBA has a soft cap. A hard cap doesn't allow the cap to be exceeded for any reason. A soft cap, which the NBA has, contains exceptions under which a team can be over. In fact, historically very few teams are ever under the cap during a season." Soft Cap: The National Basketball Association Basketball had a cap in 1946-47, gave it up, and then implemented the current version (more or less) in 1984-85. The current NBA cap limits payrolls of NBA teams to 55% of Basketball Related Income for the league. The figure will rise to 57% in 2004-05, the last season of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and can be terminated if the average NBA player salary drops below the average NFL, NHL or MLB player salary (among other reasons). Basketball Related Income (BRI) requires some complicated math but it includes revenue from tickets, advertising, local concession and souvenir sales, local media and other league, team and arena income streams. In 2001-02 the cap was set at $42.5 million. Two teams, Detroit and the LA Clippers were under the cap; Detroit by $800,000 and the Clippers by $8.8 million. The 28 other teams were all over the cap, 16 teams by more than $10 million, and 2 teams by more than $40 million (Portland and the New York Knicks). The reason teams were able to exceed the cap by so much is because many of the exceptions (including the famed "Larry Bird Exemption") apply to players who do not exercise their free agent rights or who remain with the same team for more than a couple of years. The NBA claims that "The basic idea is to try to promote the ability for players to stay with their current team. Nobody likes it when a player plays with a team his entire career, the fans love him, he wants to stay and the team wants to keep him, but he has to leave because the team is unable to offer him a large enough contract." The NBA also has a "luxury tax" in effect. If average salaries league-wide for a season go over the agreed upon limit (55% of BRI) then there is an escrow fund (composed of 10% of player salaries) held back from players' paychecks that is reimbursed equally to franchises (thereby reducing the amount teams spend on player salaries) until the 55% limit is restored. If the 10% escrow fund is not sufficient, then the highest spending teams (the ones assumed responsible for the salaries being so far over the limit) are taxed the remaining amount to reimburse the other owners. Player salaries are also capped depending on tenure in the league, but there are so many exceptions to this rule that it rarely has a major impact on the salaries of star players, the ones the true cap on salaries is supposed to affect. Obviously the NBA salary cap and luxury tax structure are not overly constraining and therefore qualify as a soft cap. As NHL commissioner Gary Betteman was the primary composer of the 1984 NBA deal, the expectation is that he will press for something similar in the NHL. Hard Cap: The National Football League The NFL cap is often called a hard cap. It was introduced in 1994 and operates on many of the same principles as the NBA cap. It limits franchises from spending more than 63% of the League-determined Defined Gross Revenues (DGR, similar to the BRI of the NBA). The cap was calculated at roughly $67.4 million for the2001-02 season. This seems to be much more than the NBA cap, but remember that NFL teams have an average of 57 players on the roster as compared to under 17 in the NBA. Despite the cap on payrolls, player salaries have continued to rise since 1994, and at a rate outpacing the growth rate of the DGR number. Because of this teams have scrambled to find ways to circumvent the cap (there are no obvious loopholes written in) so that they can keep/sign good players. The primary way that this is done is through guaranteed signing bonuses, sometimes as large as 2 or 3 times the average yearly salary on the contract, that are spread over the life of the contract when determining cap numbers. For example, a player signed for $1 million per year for five years ($5 mil total) is given a $10 million signing bonus (paid when the contract is signed). When calculating the impact on the salary cap, though, the player does not count $11 million the first year and $1 million per year thereafter (the way he is paid), he can count as $3 million each year of the contract (($10 mil +$5 mil) / 5 years). The upside for the player is that he is guaranteed $10 million (as NFL contracts can be terminated by the team at any time, unlike in other pro sports). The team gains because they get to spend to attract a star player but don't lose a huge chunk of cap space. The major downside happens if the player is injured, cut, traded or retires in which case the bonus still counts against the team even though the player isn't there, and is accelerated to be paid entirely in the current year. If the player in our example suffers a career-ending arthritic big toe after the first season, the team loses $8 million of cap room for year two of the contract. This so-called "dead money" has become the bane of many an NFL franchise. During the 2001-02 NFL season 18 of the 31 teams spent more than the $64 million salary cap thanks to the signing bonus and deferred money. 7 teams were more than $10 million over the cap, 2 were $20 million over and 1 (Denver) was $48,000 shy of being $30 million over the cap. At the other end of the scale, 2 teams (Dallas and Washington) were more than $10 million under the cap because they were weighted down with "dead money". The NFL salary cap seems to make each team's spending from year to year look like a sine wave: it goes well ove |