Thanks M, much appreciated. The amortization of the signing bonus over the life of the contract makes sense. And it's only done for accounting and cap purposes.
Adding "voidable" years is strange. They always seem to involve "dead cap" - which does have to be recognized for cap reasons, but not for accounting purposes.
Weird stuff - amazing what lawyers and accountants can cook up.
Voids are weird but they actually make sense. And yes, they always have some dead cap due their very nature.
I’ll repeat myself here. Let’s make up a simple contract that is 5 years long, 50m bonus. 10m per year for cap purposes.
After 3 years (and 30m of cap accounting, 10m per year) the player is not what he was. You decide to cut him. 20m is unaccounted for, so you immediately must account for that immediately. 20m hits your cap charges now. Or can be split over 2 years if cut after June 1st or designated a June 1st. Teams don’t have to do this. They can elect to take the cap hit in a single year should they choose.
Now let’s take that same contract. 5 years, 50m in bonus, but years 4 and 5 are void. The cap is accounted the same way. 10m per year for 3 years, 20m in the fourth. Or if year 5 is the only void year, it’s still 10m per year, but you don’t get the benefit of having the player on your roster in year 5.
Void years is just the team pre-agreeing to cut the player a year or two or three early.
