Yeah, I don't know that I would call it an artificially deflating mechanism thou. I mean, it's true I think, it does serve to regulate salary costs but I think you gotta remember how the NFL was headed in the early 90s. Teams with money were buying championships and the fan bases were becoming tired of watching the same teams continue to win. Me, I didn't mind, the Cowboys had just become a good Franchise again and the team was young but other fan bases, I can't speak for them. Remember, the players voted for this system as well. According to the CBA, I believe that the players are currently getting approximately 58% of the overall revenue associated with the NFL, that's everything before cost out. That's a substantial part of the entire deal. So what you had then were organizations that were happy to stay at the bottom and literally spend no money. They would just stay bad, pay nothing and pocket it all. The CBA changed all that and forced teams to spend a certain agreed upon percentage of revenue, not even profit. So while it does present a certain control over spending, it also provides for a lot more revenue getting into the hands of the players. That mechanism didn't exist prior too. You would get a star or two on Offense who got paid some money, maybe a RB, QB or WR and maybe a pass rusher or LB and that was it. Everybody else just got paid very little in comparison.
So you would have teams that would pay players, like the Cowboys or SF etc., and then you would have the Clevelands and Tampa Bays of the world that just wouldn't. There is a lot of really good that this system provides as well, IMO.