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Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, who is still basking in the glow of that six-year, $72 million contract with $34.75 million guaranteed, told the Associated Press that he can understand the arguments in favor of a limit to the contracts paid to guys who have never played a down in the NFL.
“You can also understand the other side of it, the concern of veterans who have been in the league 10, 12 years and proven themselves but not seen the money,” Ryan said on Tuesday. ”I can understand both sides.”
Of course he can. Because, technically, he’s now one of the guys who should be in favor a rookie wage scale. He’s gotten his; why not slam the door and shove a big chair in front of it?
It’s no different than a guy who is adamantly opposed to a military draft — until the day that he is too old to be drafted.
And that brings us back to the basic reality that, for whatever reason, the NFL Players Association continues to ignore. The guys whom a rookie wage scale would hurt are the guys who are not yet in the game, and thus don’t have a vote on the matter. The players with a vote will benefit if those windfalls are redirected to the men who have earned it.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
It’s pretty simple. The owners can pay whatever the hell they want to pay rookies so long as they meet the rookie minimum. The high hurdle they’re facing is cooperation between themselves.
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July 1st, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Get some sleep Mike. You are making no sense. People that use that type of logic stifle political debate in this country.
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July 1st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I for one completely agree with you, Florio. Please continue to bring this issue to the forefront.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 am
I’m on board, pull up the ladder.
The rookie salaries paid at the top of the 1st round are preventing the parity originally intended. If you’re on the wrong side of 50:50, it’s another 5 years of sucking eggs for the vets on the team. I can’t see how the proven players can be opposed to a rookie pay scale. Let ‘em earn and keep the teams from wasting money on players who don’t pan out. The real lack of cooperation between owners is when you’re at the top of the draft and no team will trade out with you because of the astronomical cost. This year was an exception, but often teams don’t have the luxury to trade out of these big risky contracts.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 12:52 am
Rookie pay is an issue that seems to make reasonable people take leave of their senses. High draft picks make bank because owners/GMs think they’re a good investment. The risk that they will tank is factored in to the equation. Freshman economics.
The guys who have “earned it” will get what they deserve in their next contract. Franchising and other anti-competitive practices used to keep the very-good to great vets from getting their full value are the true culprits in this tale, not rookies.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
Question is, why are football players making so much money? Does Matt Ryan possess some kind of discernable skill like hitting a major league fastball .330 and 40+ homeruns a year? Or is he just a cog that reflects the talent level of the team around him given that he understands the basics of the game.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 4:25 am
If one really stops and thinks about it….what business is it of ours or anyone else how much money any of them make? I mean…how backwards is it when someone is paid more in one year (to play a game) than the people teaching our children will make in a lifetime?
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July 2nd, 2008 at 5:06 am
Florio, you do realize the inherent problem with collective bargaining? Both sides may agree to the terms, but then one or both sides may find they have built a monster after the fact.
In this case, rookies at the top of the draft get a far larger “piece of the pie” than they deserve. The irony is that the owners are the ones trying to fix this injustice and not the players.
Even you must admit that a union should be more concerned with the “workers” it is currently representing, not the ones to be “hired” in the future. In this specific case, the union should make sure the current players should get as much as reasonably possible.
Ideally, the union should agree to the rookie wage scale, with escalators built into the collective bargaining agreement which will raise the scale in relation to the NFL’s overall income. In addition, the union should also negotiate a rookie limit on contract lengths, thereby forcing the teams to renegotiate with their rookies after several years, although allowing for renegotiation after the first season.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 6:45 am
Since the Players Union is made up of CURRENT players, you would think this issue would have been resolved a long time ago. If I was the top salesman at a company and they paid a recent graduate double what I was making because he had ‘potential’, I would be pissed. Why these guys drive the sport and then let unproven kids come in and take all the money is beyond me.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 7:03 am
I cannot believe how dead set on fighting this issue Upshaw is. The fact that he more interested in fighting for athletes that don’t pay him yet rather than the players he is suppose to protect. I think it all a smokescreen because he knows he will have to cave on this. It always amazes me how childish these negogiations become in all the sports.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Do unsigned rookies get a vote? They’re still outnumbered, but presumably they’d vote for the existing system.
And would it create a problem with college football if the system changed? All those folks playing for free wouldn’t have the big pot of gold after draft day to play for.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 8:15 am
Apparently Upshaw is not interested in representing the interests of former NFLPA members (disability benefits) but he is interested in representing the interests of future NFLPA members. If Ditka wants Upshaw’s ear, all he has to do is declare for the draft again.
There will always be corrupt people like Upshaw in sports. You can only blame the players for keeping him in power.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
It seems fairly straightforward to me. Upshaw is positioning himself, based on how the owners are positioning themselves. Ownership is saying that they need a new deal them. It’s the owners bringing all the demands to the table, not the union. For Upshaw, it’s his job as head negotiator to ensure that the more issues ownership brings to the table, the more concessions they will have to make in other areas of the negotiation.
It’s not about ideology. Ideology and “good of the game” are what fans and journalist talk about. Problem is that conversation doesn’t fit within the combative context of labour negotiation. Am I saying Gene Upshaw doesn’t care about what’s good for the game? To discuss the issue from Upshaw, simply to do his job, has to oppose a rookie wage scale because that’s what ownership wants. Welcome to the world of collective bargaining.
If ownership REALLY wants a rookie wage scale, they’ll have to give up something to get it - not just have Roger Goodell crying about it at press conferences. Don’t forget, it is ownership killing the goose that lays the golden egg, by blowing up the current CBA 3 years early.
You don’t prematurely terminate a deal then show up with a laundry-list of demands and expect the person on the other side of the table to just give them to you, do you? The owners’ position is somewhat akin to you or me using an out-clause to (legally) break a lease with a landlord, then trying to re-sign for the same apartment and insisting we pay less rent than we were previously and we want tougher rent-control measures built into the new lease.
If the landlord is desperate for tenants, it might work. The thing is, it’s not like the NFL is hurting for money -the teams are still making money. Maybe they aren’t making as much money as they were before the current CBA but they’re still making more money than any of us will see in a lifetime. So why exactly is it incumbent on the players to just give ownership everything they want? For the “good” of the game? Since when is what’s best for ownership what’s best for “the game?”
Don’t forget, it is NFL owners that are introducing things like snitch-lines for people who stand during games and $5K-$10K seat licenses. Ask NHL fans if a protracted lock-out, which results in the owners achieving each and every one of their demands, has done anything to make hockey tickets cheaper (For the majority of you, who don’t know any NHL fans, I’ll give you a hint – NHL tickets have only one up in price since their labour melt-down that promised fans cheaper duckets).
Ownership is behaving like they have all the cards. That’s cool; they’ve decided they’re ready for a fight. Given the way the players caved the last time there was a work stoppage, I don’t blame them for giving the players a gut-check. But make no mistake about it, ownership doesn’t care about fans or “the good of the game” any more than the union does – they are a revenue source nothing more, nothing less. If compromising fans or the game itself results in more black ink being used to print their annual reports then don’t think for a second that ownership would hesitate to do so.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 11:01 am
First of all there already is a rookie cap. It is in the form of an allocation pool. If a team chooses to give one player a chunk of it, the other rookies they draft or sign get less. None of it comes out of the veteran portion of the salary cap.
The argument the top rookies don’t deserve the money is arbitrary opinion based on personal experience in a different line of work. Try becoming a top 10 pick and then tell me you did not deserve the contract, that was offered by the team that interviewed you 4 times, worked you out 3 times and studied your entire life for 3 months before they drafted you.
In every draft, there are at least 10 players a team passed on that they would have given the top 10 money to, and would have been happy to do it. Just draft well, and you will never overspend for a rookie. You can always cut them and limit the “cap hit” to 1 or 2 years max.
No vet player in the history of the NFL was cut directly because a team gave too much money to a rookie. The NFL will cut any player, any time the second they think they are not worth what they are scheduled to make.
There is already 400 million in unspent salary cap space right now. The owners have displayed no history of giving any more money to vet players than they absolutly have to.
7-10 Rookies getting top dollar is one of the few mechanisms for increasing the money teams must give vet players. They push up the franchise tag number and set the market value for vet free agents.
“Gauranteed money” in the NFL is not really gauranteed. If you retire, they will take back a prorated portion of the “gauranteed” money.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Gentlemen,
There are no gaurantee’s to rookies. I don’t care if you played like Donovan McNabb for four years of college, you haven’t earned anything and therefore you deserve nothing outside a chance a to play in the nfl.
Also, seared_eyes, your wrong when you say these athletes play for free. As a finishing college student I can promise you, there is nothing free about playing the game. Those students get a free ride through college, free room and board, food, education assistance, and some pocket money. NCAA athletes don’t play for free, they play for fan education valued at a minumem worth 40K a year. And if they don’t take advantage of it, well they were idiots to begin with.
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