In the NFL, salary cap "management" involves applying the principles and practices of accounting to a very specific budgetary challenge: setting salaries and benefits for the players on a team's roster.

But the reach and impact is much greater: It helps define a team's global business plan in aspects as wide-ranging as cash-flow planning, ticket pricing and sales management, marketing and media strategies, sponsor partnerships and execution, corporate business planning and even capital investing and debt management. 

It is not a management tool as much as it is a single metric – albeit a very large one – in establishing a full “financial statement” view of team operations.