More Pre-draft Thoughts

I've bitched about it before and I'm sure I'll bitch about it again, but the biggest thing wrong with the NFL is the rookie salary pool. Actually, I'm for a rookie salary cap, but the pool is completely out of control. Now, I don't have a problem with the money professional athletes as long as they earn it. I do hate when players sign a big contract and suddenly stop playing hard, but I'm not going to sit here and wonder why a pro football player makes millions while a teacher makes a lot less. To be honest, there are a lot more people in America who can teach school (and a lot who really can't, but do anyway) than can play high level sports. Actually, I think teacher pay is off base. Thanks to teacher's unions, a second grade teacher and a high school physics teacher with the same amount of time will earn about the same salary in a school district even though I think teaching high school physics is a lot more demanding. But I digress. Plenty of people can play basketball, but you might notice the lack of an audience for games at the Y. Besides, in the case of NFL players, they will most likely pay a long term price whether from brain mush or the inability to walk normally. I remember watching the Heisman Trophy ceremony some years back, and they showed previous winners coming in. Jay Berwanger was the original winner in 1935, and when he walked in, he moved a lot more easily than winners from the 70s and 80s even though he was 40 or 50 years older. That's because pro football in the 1930s was less lucrative for a University of Chicago grad than private business, so Berwanger never smashed up his body by playing pro ball.

Besides, we live in a capitalist society. Professional football is very popular which means showing it on TV leads to big ratings. Networks can charge a lot more money to advertisers who want to get their product in front of as many people as possible. The NFL knows the networks get a lot for ads during their games, so they make the networks pay a lot to show them. Add a mega-TV deal with thousands of fans in the seats, merchandise out the wazoo and assorted other sources of income and you get lots of money going into the game. Since the players are the ones people are watching, I have no problem with the bulk of the money going to them. It's no different than an actor making $20 million for a movie, but that never gets as bad a rap as pro athletes making that kind of cash. It's real easy to say no one deserves millions of dollars to play sports, but I'm not going to be a hypocrite. My job doesn't deserve a salary of a million dollars, but if the company I work for stupidly offered me a million dollars to do it, there's no way I would turn it down and say I didn't deserve it. My guess is most of the people who bitch about players' salaries would do the same thing.

No, my problem with the rookie pool in the NFL is the same problem I have with players who don't earn their money. It skews things. Like any other (non-government related) career, a professional athlete should be paid based on his ability in relation to his peers. If you are one of the best quarterbacks in the league, your next contract should reflect that. The problem with rookies is how much more the number 1 pick makes than guys taken just a few picks later even though as I pointed out yesterday, the draft is somewhat of a crapshoot. With an overall salary cap, a number 1 pick who is a bust will be a long term problem because that player usually gets a large amount of money in the form of a signing bonus which is guaranteed money prorated over the life of the contract. TECHNICAL EXPLANATION ALERT: For example, a player signs an $8 million contract over 4 years with $4 million guaranteed as a signing bonus. Even though the bonus is paid up front, it is prorated over the life of the contract for salary cap purposes which means the player counts $2 million against the cap each year. However, if he's a bust and the team cuts him after his first year, the remainder of the prorated signing bonus counts that year. So, instead of $2 million against the cap, he will count $6 million and won't be playing for them. That's money that can't be used on other players. It becomes more problematic with number 1 picks because their guaranteed money is huge. Last year, Mario Williams had $26.5 million guaranteed on a six year contract. If he doesn't last six years, that's a lot of dead money on the team's cap. So, teams are actually forced to keep them.

The big problem for me is that the reason the draft is a crapshoot is that while college football can be a pretty good indicator of pro success, it isn't definite. As I pointed out yesterday, a third of the players drafted in the first round this year probably won't pan out. Usually there isn't a consensus number 1 pick or even a consensus at a position. A story (which I don’t really believe) is floating around that the Raiders have made a contract offer to Brady Quinn (if you have the #1 pick, you can negotiate with players) even though most people think they are locked on JaMarcus Russell at quarterback. The reason being is because they figure Quinn will sign a cheaper contract than Russell even though most teams have them pretty close on their draft boards with some teams having Quinn ahead. Why do they think they can get Quinn cheaper? The teams that are drafting early like Russell better. If Quinn goes first, Russell won't fall past the Browns with the third pick. Word is that if Russell goes first, the Browns will pass on Quinn for Adrian Peterson. So, Quinn could easily fall to Minnesota at seven. Last year's seventh pick, Michael Huff, signed a contract that totaled about what Mario Williams got in guaranteed money alone and about $12 million less in guaranteed money. That's only six picks apart. That's insane. If Quinn thinks he will fall to seventh, he would be smart to take a lowball offer from the Raiders because the pay drop to seventh is huge. I agree with Steve Young - just grab Calvin Johnson.