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@Aroogah
Simple - if you are the absolute worst team in the NFL and go 0-15 you are still in the NFL the following season. That is the largest most significant difference in the way it drives organisational behaviour.
You are not relegated. You still get your cut of the TV revenue. You get the top pick in the NFL draft and choose a player that you had no hand in developing. You only buy: you do not develop players, you have no youth system, no reserve team.
You sign them for a huge signing bonus (which doesn't count against the salary cap) and pay them largely in performance related bonuses (that also that mostly fall outside of the salary cap structure). Half way through the contract you can renegotiate the deal to change the large final year salaries (that are there to defend against unwanted trades and to drive up the potential numbers for the draftee) to free up huge chunks of your salary spend so you can do the same thing all over again to some other sucker.
The implementation of the salary cap in the NFL, NBA and MLB is a joke - there are so many exceptions that the bulk of the money made by the players don't hit the salary cap much.
And parity is not the same as fairness. Parity ensures that the games are competitive and that the league as a whole is entertaining. Parity does not ensure that is fair for all teams. It's not semantics, it is a business strategy by the league (which own all the teams anyway and is another fundamental difference that you are overlooking).