Roger Goodell announced that the NFL may have no salary cap come 2010. Some people don't really care about this news, but it does play a huge part in the sport, and here is why.

Will there be fair competition without a salary cap? Will the wealthy teams be able to afford any player they want? The answer is sort of.

The wealthy teams will be able to spend any money to keep their key players from previous seasons. There would be no worry of losing an important player, unless it is due to chemistry issues. There is no worry about free-agency issues, because frankly, teams will have enough money to re-sign the player. However, this can also happen with a salary cap, because teams have manipulated the salary cap in different ways to keep their star players around. Does Dan Snyder ring a bell?

Another huge impact of no salary cap is that teams would be able to franchise more than one player. Perhaps two or three guys. Therefore, a player can be prevented from free agency by being franchised. This does not even require a contract extension, just tag him as a franchise player and you are all set. Essentially, a team may keep their core players together, and draft a great team with a sound core. For example, build a team around Brady, Mayo and Moss.

So all the top teams will get better and better, and the bottom teams will be stuck at the bottom of the pit? Not quite.

There is this rule in the NFL that keeps teams at an equal level of competition, kind of like checks and balances of the government. The top teams in the NFL, top eight teams, are allowed to sign free agents only at the rate they lose them. That means, the team that franchises their players and does not lose any players to free agency, cannot improve their team with new draft picks. Also, as always, the worse teams will always chose first, as they have the ability to improve their team from season to season. This keeps teams at an equal playing field throughout.

Will the no salary cap ruin the NFL? You decide.