Free-agent RB Michael Turner

Free agency in the NFL is about money. All right? Am I going too fast?

Money, I should note, is something about which sportswriters know very little, but I can recognize it when I see it, as I do now. It is stacked high in the treasuries of the teams that are preparing to engage in the league’s annual auction. There are gobs of it, with the franchises sitting something like a composite $350 million under the per-team cap of $116 million and positioned to fling these riches in the direction of the athletes eligible to rearrange their futures.

Some deserving people, and some not so deserving, are about to become enormously wealthy. “It’s a buyer’s market,” said a man I know who meticulously maintains an accounting on NFL contractual data. “Half the teams can do whatever they want.”

A couple of weeks ago, by my man’s arithmetic, only two of the 32 franchises were over the cap. They were Washington, which is $7 million over, and Indianapolis, which is $4 million over. Carolina recently dropped below the cap after making a few cuts. All the other clubs were under the cap, many appreciably. Tennessee, Cincinnati, Miami, San Francisco and Jacksonville — as of this writing, all of those clubs were more than $30 million under.

These figures underscore that while the playing fields in the NFL are level, what occurs in the teams’ counting houses is not. The Redskins have commitments to players of about $125 million. At roughly $38 million under, the Titans’ commitments come to $79 million. Tell me there is equality there.

That Washington is the most over the cap is not going to represent a burden to the club. Cap dollars are not real dollars. They are easily adjustable. All the Redskins have to do is rewrite a couple more guys’ contracts, assigning them modest salaries along with signing bonuses, which for cap purposes can be apportioned through the length of a contract. Simple.

Meantime, athletes such as Asante Samuel, the very capable Patriots cornerback, and Michael Turner, the San Diego running back, are about to become members of the landed gentry. They’re entitled. What is going to be interesting concerning this procedure is how much players of lesser prowess are going to receive. Football players already are handsomely rewarded. Their status, one can suspect, is about to ascend to another level.

One cannot begrudge the athletes who, through their efforts, have established themselves as professionals. Where the NFL system loses me is in its practice of bestowing enormous sums on rookies who have not demonstrated that they possess the pro knack. The league’s salary structure is upside down. In no other form of commerce do entry-level persons command rewards that exceed those of established employees.

In the draft, the first person selected is likely to come away with a contract totaling as much as $30 million guaranteed. At the Super Bowl, commissioner Roger Goodell was asked if it might not be time for the league to rethink how it is structured from a compensation standpoint. Goodell’s response was that the matter has been discussed with the Players Association.

“We think it is an important thing,” the commissioner said. “We’re not trying in this case to pay players less money. What we’re trying to do is make sure that the money that is allocated to the salary cap goes to the players that have earned it, that have done it over a period of time. I think that’s something that we’ll continue to engage in with the Players Association.”

The players’ group would welcome such an action. Rookies, after all, are not members of the union. But for NFL teams in concert to cut back on how they compensate rookies could be construed, I suspect, as collusion. Persons with more legal expertise than mine have advised me that it is difficult for any organization to amend practices of long standing.

But free agency is the matter at hand. Run through the list of unrestricted free agents, and it is difficult to fix on many who could have a profound influence on the course of events in the NFL. Randy Moss, certainly, but I can’t see him taking a hike on Bill Belichick. Can you?

Who else? Samuel. Turner. Not many others. Many of the hearties who would have been prizes in free agency have had “franchise” tags affixed on them. But as the fellow in the motion picture said, “Show me the money.” There is a lot of money available in this procedure, and guys are going to be pocketing it.

Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for PFW since its inception in 1967.