With the NFL free-agency period opening last week, we’ve seen teams such as the Chicago Bears deciding to spend large amounts of money on big-name players. That could backfire.

For the first time in a decade, the NFL is entering the upcoming season with no salary cap, which had been written into the now-expired collective-bargaining agreement. That agreement will be set aside for the time-being as the league pursues a new deal, which means teams are not limited in the amount of money they can spend on players.

However, some teams might be in trouble after this season if the future collective-bargaining agreement includes a salary cap. If a cap is reinstated, many of the players that are being signed to large contracts this year might have to be cut by teams that would need to reduce their total payrolls.

Since it was implemented, the NFL salary cap has been a major topic of discussion because it has forced teams to cut players who have performed so well for their franchises over several seasons that their salaries have become unaffordable. The cap is the reason that many former stars have had to finish their careers with another team.

Now, assuming some players will see a huge pay increase without a salary cap, it would appear that the owners are going to have difficulty reinstating the cap next year. Many sources such as ESPN speculate as to whether there will be a strike in 2011, which could be a disaster for teams that have guaranteed money in some players’ contracts. For example, the Bears’ Julius Peppers is guaranteed to receive $42 million of his new $91 million contract. The Bears would have to pay Peppers whether there is a season or not.

In the event of a strike, there could be serious fallout. Strikes have a history of angering fans enough that future attendance and revenue take a big hit. When that is coupled with the current economic situation, it is possible that fans, especially those in middle-income families, will choose to spend their limited discretionary incomes at other sporting events or at other venues.

It appears that the best course of action would be a compromise between the salary cap that was in place and not having a cap at all. The league should examine the NBA model of a “soft cap,”  which allows teams to offer higher salaries to their own players in an effort to retain them. Such policies allow the players to make more money while still allowing for a fairly equal playing field between the large- and small-market teams. It also would make trading more interesting, as teams over the established cap would need to make sure that the salaries being traded were within a certain range of each other.