The Gagme Test

So you think could run a professional team because you believe you understand free agency, salary caps, luxury taxes and all the other arcania that are the mother's milk of modern-day sports? Well, brainiac, we've devised a pop quiz for people like you, would-be front-office types who think they know their Plan B's from their Group Ill's. What follows is our standardized test, culled from the collective bargaining agreements of the NBA, NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball. We call it the General Aptitude General Manager's Examination, or GAGME.

No. 2 pencils ready? Begin. (Answers at the bottom of each page.)

1. Plan B is not:

(a) A system of NFL free agency that allows a team to protect its top 20 players, including a "franchise" player.
(b) A system of NFL free agency that allowed a team to protect its top 30 players but was struck down as illegal by a federal jury in September 1992.
(c) An exceedingly strange name, given that the NFL never instituted a Plan A.

(a)
(b)
(c)

2. The entry-level cap is:

(a) The NHL's maximum rookie salary of $975,000.
(b) A ceiling placed on the number of salary-restricted rookies an NHL team may carry.
(c) Made of paper and worn by fry-line personnel at Hardee's.

(a)
(b)
(c)

3. As stipulated in the NBA's collective bargaining agreement, the minimum team salary is:

(a) The "greater of the seventh-lowest payroll of any team in the previous season or 1/58 (1.724%) of gross league revenues from the previous season."
(b) 75% of a team's salary cap.
(c) An arbitrary sum disbursed each season by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling.