I still like the idea of a marquee player that you can pay whatever you want as well as a cap applying to the other members of the team - kind of a one-player luxury tax, I suppose.
I've also been contemplating focusing on salary minimum more than worrying about the maximum - and then rather than giving the league back any surplus money to give to the 'poor' clubs, tying the salary spend into a compulsory marketing spend, ie:
1) Spend what you like on the cap, but you have to be above $X
2) For your salary spend, your team MUST spend a fixed percentage on marketing (say 10 or 20 percent?)
2a) Or that 10% goes to the NewBL to spend on league-wide marketing
2b) Or maybe split it both ways: 5% to be spent by the team marketing itself locally, and the other 5% to go to the NewBL to market the league generally.
So if the cap minimum is $1 million, each team must spend no less than $100K on marketing. If you (aka that Forrest guy in WA who's worth a bomb and could, hypothetically, own the Wildcats, or any other NewBL team for that matter) land Lebron as your marquee player in 2010 for $50 million per, you need to spend $5 million on marketing.
I guess my point is that tying compulsory marketing into the NewBL financial structure could be something worth doing, if it's legal?