Remember the Titans? The team that went 26-6 over the past two regular seasons, best in the NFL? They rolled with Air McNair, Eddie George and The Freak, for sure. But the Big Three went to war each week knowing that a pack of talented, popular and well-paid supporting players had their backs. Guys like safety Marcus Robertson, defensive end Kenny Holmes, cornerback Denard Walker, fullback Lorenzo Neal and kicker Al Del Greco.

Well, those other guys are all gone now, either through free agency or outright cuts, commodities swept off the Titans' shelf by the limits of the NFL salary cap. (To be fair, Del Greco's I-used-to-be-able-to-do-this show against the Ravens in the playoffs helped run him out of town.)

"This is our first big venture into what you would consider a cycle," says GM Floyd Reese. Ah, but what's farther down the curve for a team trying to hold onto its stars into the near -- if not distant -- future? Perhaps the fate of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who were nearly $38 million over the cap by season's end and had to cut 15 players by March 2. And what lies at the bottom of the cycle? Say hello to (what's left of) the Cowboys, who have no starting quarterback -- well, nobody they can pay like one, anyway -- and more than $20 million of their cap committed to "dead money," i.e., ex-Cowboys.

In the world of the cap, team payrolls and player salaries are often as murky as Barry Sanders' dinner plans. But two things are perfectly clear: The window to craft a title team closes quickly, and when it slams shut, veterans -- even the competent ones -- take the hit. In what other line of work could you be told, "You're doing a helluva job. Now give us back half your salary -- or else"?

So you want to understand how the salary cap works? (Are you sitting down?) Step 1: The 31 NFL teams share most revenues, including TV and ticket money, though not concessions. Step 2: Slightly less than two-thirds of the shared revenue is set aside to pay players (that makes for a cap of $67.4 million per team this season). Step 3: Teams have until early March to get under the cap number. Once there, they have to stay there.

Sounds simple enough. But wait. Although there are no NBA-style Larry Bird rules or injury exemptions, there are exceptions. Exception 1: Signing bonuses are prorated over the life of a contract. If you sign a four-year deal with an $8 million signing bonus, you'll get your bonus money up front, but your team will count $2 million of it against the cap each year of the contract. Exception 2: Incentives count against the cap in the year they might get paid if they are "likely to be earned." If an incentive is "unlikely to be earned," it counts against the cap the following year, if it is met. (Don't ask how teams decide whether rookies are likely or unlikely to earn their incentives.)

And then there's the exception to Exception 1: If a player (let's call him Troy) retires or is traded in the middle of his deal, the rest of his prorated signing bonus is accelerated. In other words, it counts against his team's cap all at once. If you sign that four-year deal with the $8 million signing bonus, then bolt after one season, your team will take a $6 million cap hit in Year 2.

Pretty Byzantine. Even harder to demystify are the various imaginary powers of the cap. Listen up: The salary cap does not, despite its name, keep salaries down. Players earn a share of the revenues that their business generates, and their aggregate pay bobs up and down with the success of their product. The cap has risen from $34.6 million to $67.4 million over the past seven years, mostly because of lucrative national TV contracts. But when NFL revenues fell by 1.3% in 1994, total player compensation decreased by 1%.

The cap does not promote parity, either. The NFL's playing field is impressively level -- 13 different teams have made it to the last eight Super Bowls. But credit goes to revenue sharing and the schedule makers. The salary cap sounds like it should help close the quality gap. But since teams can prorate bonuses, they can actually spend far more in a year than the dollar figure of the cap seems to allow, though they'll pay for it down the line.

And the cap did not force Jerry Rice to leave the 49ers. Great players are underpaid when they are young, usually cash in when they can and often end up overpaid when they age, leaving teams little choice but to dump their salaries if they won't hang 'em up. That's life. "You rise, you peak, you come down," says Carl Francis, spokesman for the players association. "Hey, Jerry Rice replaced a fading Freddie Solomon."

And no, the cap didn't force the Cardinals to give Jake Plummer a nearly $30 million deal before he was even eligible for free agency. As former Bills GM John Butler said when the cap was first instituted: "It's the same as the draft. You could give some teams 18 draft choices and they'd still screw it up."

Want to know what the cap can do? Ask Max Lane. You might not recognize his name unless you're a die-hard Patriots fan, but Lane has been a solid offensive lineman in New England for the past seven seasons. He started at right tackle when the Pats made the Super Bowl in January 1997, and in 1998, he signed a five-year, $11 million contract that included a $2.8 million bonus. In February of this year, New England told Lane he'd be cut unless he renegotiated, so he inked a thriftier pact that reduced his cap number from $3.7 million to $1.3 million. In May, the Pats cut Lane anyway -- two months after the free agency market opened and just before he was about to earn a $405,000 workout bonus. "We were dumbfounded," says Harold Lewis, Lane's agent. "After all the years he put out there, and just after he got married, too. You don't say, 'Thank you, Max, see you in June,' and then say, 'Hey, we better cut him now.'"

Actually, you do. See, there are no guaranteed contracts in the NFL. Want to get rid of a guy a month before he's done rehabbing an ACL, a week before he makes a roster bonus, a day before he earns a workout incentive? No problem. The very best players in the game will always get their money, but the salary cap ensures that cash will be tight for everyone else -- and that veterans will be caught in the vise. Cornelius Bennett, Bryan Cox, Elvis Grbac, John Randle, Levon Kirkland -- all were let loose this off-season. And behind them are Lane and dozens of 7-to-10-year linemen.

You know whom the cap is about? Bill Parcells. After Vinny Testaverde had a career year in 1998, The Tuna gave him a huge, backloaded contract. In 2002, when he will be pushing 40, Testaverde will count almost $11 million against the Jets' cap. Curtis Martin is in a similar situation. His number this season is $8.5 million, a figure that will rise to $11.4 million in 2003. Signing these stars to long-term deals and loading up on other vets was how Parcells took his shot at a title. Now he's skipped town, leaving the Jets with a mortgaged future.

The Jets are not alone. Prorated signing bonuses and the absence of guaranteed contracts encourage all teams to treat cap money like plastic money. Want to give big bucks to a player who might put you over the top? Funnel part of your offer into a huge signing bonus and part into future compensation, and voilą, you have your guy and an intact cap. "In essence, you use a charge card to pay for players," says Seattle coach and GM Mike Holmgren.

Eventually, though, next year comes. And when you're faced with skyrocketing obligations to players in the third and fourth years of long-term contracts that looked so smart when you signed them, you have two choices: renegotiate, and push your problems into the future, or cut players, and start the painful process of wrecking your program. You can pay that credit card bill, in other words, either by charging it to another card with a higher interest rate, or by selling your furniture. And the dilemma only grows worse. Just ask Jacksonville. In 1998, the Jags used $58.4 million in cap dollars, but actually spent $63.7 million on players. In 1999, those numbers were $59.7 million and $80 million. This spring, they hit a brick wall.

With the brick wall always around the bend, why do players accept long-term deals they'll never complete? "The real reason for the extra years is so teams can spread the impact of the bonus," says agent Neil Schwartz, who has negotiated long-term deals for Terrell Davis and Daryl Gardener, among others. "What you have to look at is how much money the player gets the first three years. You can't predict the future beyond that."

The present, though, is full of trouble. "This is the worst it's been," says Bills GM Tom Donahoe. "At least half the teams in the league have significant cap issues they must deal with." Three teams, Dallas, Kansas City and San Francisco, have 30% or more of their caps allocated to dead money, according to Terry O'Neil of Realteam.com, who tracks cap dollars. Meanwhile, teams cut 100 players in March alone.

The players union accepts the cap because its biggest, highest-paid stars are always going to get theirs, and because its officers have come to believe that keeping peace with the owners is the best way to keep its hand in the cookie jar of NFL cash. "We understand the big picture is about keeping our sport in front of fans and not worrying about labor stoppages," says Francis. Sounding more like an owner than any MLB or NBA union rep ever would, he adds: "The cap is a budget. It's what any organization has. You can't be paying guys who are 40 years old five or six million a year."

Naturally, the league agrees. "With the cap, you have an idea of what expenses are going to be," says Peter Ruocco, who heads the NFL Management Council. "At the same time, minimum salaries are much greater, the median salary has grown and average salaries have grown. All of the things meant to happen in this system have happened." Ruocco also points out a little-known fact: Teams must spend a minimum amount every year, which forces franchises to compete and not simply pocket shared revenues.

But here's the bottom line according to commish Paul Tagliabue: Salaries are increasing about 40% a year while the cap rises about 10% a year. Simply put, the cap's incentives are luring more and more teams into worse and worse financial squeezes. And they've got no one to blame but themselves.

This article appears in the July 23 issue of ESPN The Magazine.