Richard Alm: High salaries not making cut with rich teams

Now, the Dallas Cowboys are probably going to decide they can't afford cornerback Deion Sanders' asking price of $10 million a year.

Calculations like these are going on all over team sports. More than ever before, franchises are making personnel decisions based on players' paychecks rather than their talents.

Teams often jettison extravagant contracts, but in the past it was usually an act of desperation for poorer teams in smaller markets. The twist in the fates of Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Sanders: Neither the Rangers nor Cowboys are hapless, low-revenue outfits struggling to stay in the game with the big-money teams of their sports.

The Cowboys are probably the National Football League's richest team. The Rangers, taking aim at selling 3 million tickets at The Ballpark in Arlington, can't plead poverty, especially with owner Tom Hicks' deep pockets.

These days, with athletes maki
ng movie-star money, no team can spend without constraints.

"It's difficult to put a good team on the field when a lot of dollars go only to a certain number of players," said Rangers general manager Doug Melvin. "If you have a $70 million payroll and 75 percent of that is going to 15 percent of your players, it's tough to have a good team."

Teams are getting religion on fiscal restraint for any number of reasons.

Part of it is the discipline imposed from outside through such mechanisms as salary caps. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones probably could afford Mr. Sanders' services, but he operates within the National Football League's payroll ceiling of $62 million for next year. Keeping Mr. Sanders might prevent the team from signing players at several positions.

Baseball places no limits on payrolls, so it's up to owners to set a budget. The Rangers figure they lost $10 million last year, so Mr. Hicks decreed a reduction in the payroll. Once the team found out how much it would cost to keep Mr. Gonzales
, it shipped him off to the Detroit Tigers for younger, cheaper players.

Some teams look at wins and losses to decide whether their money is well-spent. It used to be that financially weak teams sent their expensive players to the franchises fat with revenues. Now, even the big-market teams that aren't winning often look to unload high-salaried players.

The Chicago Blackhawks, sitting at the bottom of the National Hockey League's Western Conference, this week shipped veteran defensemen Dave Manson and Sylvain Cote to the Dallas Stars in a cost-cutting move.

Mr. Manson makes $1.65 million a year. Mr. Cote earns $1.5 million a year. The Stars, a team that plays in an arena without cash-rich luxury suites, ended up taking over the salary obligations of a team playing in a 6-year-old arena with 216 suites, a total exceeded only by the Cowboys' 379.

Many owners blame the big-market teams for bidding up salaries. It's somewhat ironic, then, that the reluctance of even the richer clubs to spend freely
hasn't put the brakes on player salaries. There always seems to be a team willing to break the bank for a big-name star - and, in this day and age, it's not always a big-market franchise.

The Tigers, a franchise looking for a marquee attraction as it moves into a new ballpark this spring, are now offering to pay Mr. Gonzalez $140 million over eight years.

"Who's the other bidder on that deal?" asked Jim Lites, president of the Rangers and Stars. "I think that's ridiculous. We wouldn't pay that. How we can exist with contracts of that magnitude is beyond me."

If Mr. Gonzalez signs, it will be the richest contract in baseball history. Then again, maybe not. Sammy Sosa, who battled the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire over baseball's home-run title the last two seasons, already figured out what it will take to keep him in a Chicago Cubs uniform: $160 million over several years.

If the Cubs decide that they can't afford to pay that much, it's a good bet that Mr. Sosa will find some other team willi
ng to make the deal.

Staff writer Richard Alm reports on sports business for The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is ralm@dallasnews.com.