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The AFL has borrowed a lot from the NFL over the years. The draft, salary cap, free agency and now its equalisation policy have all been based on the American model.
The NFL has been like a big brother and the AFL has not hidden the fact that it has leant heavily on NFL ideas. For the most part it’s been all for the better.
Yet there is one AFL policy that not even the socialist-minded NFL would touch, and that is the AFL’s cost of living allowance [COLA], which sees the Sydney Swans receive an extra 9.8 per cent in its salary cap to assist their players with rent allowance.
Fair enough many would say as, according to Australia Bureau of Statistics figures, rent in Melbourne is roughly 25 per cent less than Sydney. The stats also showed that consumer prices were generally three per cent cheaper in Melbourne.
Using the bureau’s figures the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling showed that the price of a typical basket of goods and services in Sydney was just over $68,000 per annum, and Melbourne’s was just under $66,000.
What if the NFL introduced a COLA? Let’s take downtrodden Detroit and compare it to New York City. Detroit’s rent is 70 per cent lower than NYC. Consumer prices and groceries are both 25 per cent lower.
The rent in Green Bay Wisconsin, home of the only publicly-owned NFL team the Green Bay Packers, is also 70 per cent less than NYC. According to CNN Money an annual salary in Green Bay of $500,000 is comparable to a New York salary of $1.18m a year.
Now that’s hardly fair to all those players plying their trade in downtown pricey New York City. A player earning $1m a year in New York would be left with less cash in his hand than his colleague in Green Bay or Detroit earning the same salary.
Yet the NFL has nothing in place that even remotely resembles a COLA. No team is compensated for cost of living expenses.
So let’s call a spade a spade – the COLA has nothing to do with rent allowance. Even more so it allows the Swans a substantial advantage over many clubs and far more than the $1m a year widely reported.
The Swans pay close to 100 per cent of its salary cap, while some other clubs like the Bulldogs pay closer to the league minimum of 95 per cent. Effectively Sydney is paying nearly $1.5m a year more than the Bulldogs. That’s a decent advantage.
To call the Swans cheats is silly and unfair as they play within the rules that are placed before them. Plus they have had an uncanny ability to recruit players from other clubs that go on and become excellent players, such as Josh Kennedy, Ted Richards and Shane Mumford before he left for the Giants.
Since the Swans’ last premiership in 2012 they have been fortunate enough to recruit the two best forwards on the market, an extraordinary coup in these days of equality in the league.
Yet if the COLA was not an unfair advantage, then why are the AFL abolishing it?
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