July 27, 2005
42 Days
Alas, the NFL season starts in 42 days. Really, February until mid-September is just a waste of time.
ESPN is airing “NFL Live” daily, covering basically everything you ever did/didn’t want to know about some 9th string cornerback from Southwest Alabama State. Admittedly, I love it. The biggest news for me this week is that starting next season, Al Michaels will be manning the Monday Night Football booth with Joe Theismann (pronounced “Teese-man” until his senior year at Notre Dame, when he changed it to rhyme with “Heisman”. No, he didn’t win.). First, Theismann is an upgrade over the aging John Madden, who sometimes isn’t really sure if he’s on foot or horseback. ESPN now has MNF, taking it from ABC after 145 years (plus or minus). But the news that bothered me, and I am sure bothered absolutely no one else, is that Paul Maguire will no longer be doing the Sunday night games. Hands-down the best analyst in football.
The real reason I started this post -
All the big name stars that are holding out and threatening to not show up for training camp. First and foremost, Terrell Owens. I have to admit, I despise Terrell Owens, so I am a bit biased. Terrell is unhappy with his $7M per year contract, claiming that he is worth far more than that. Based on his numbers last year, yes, he probably is worth more than $7M per year. Guys that put up 1/2 the numbers he did in 2004 are making more than he is. To me, that is irrelevant. The point is that he signed a contract. He should be expected to fulfill his obligation.
Seems like a no-brainer, right? If your contract is for $49m over 7 years, you play for $7M per year and shut your mouth. But in the NFL, contracts are not guaranteed (unlike NBA, NHL, MLB). A player can be cut at any time and the contract is voided (granted there is guaranteed money is most contracts, like signing bonuses, but certainly not all the money is guaranteed). So if a player UNDERachieves, a team can say “take a pay cut, restructure your contract – or we’ll waive you”. Now if a player OVERachieves, should he be entitled to the same logic? “I put up better numbers than exptected, I need to get paid more”. Should it work both ways?
In Terrell’s case, I say NO. Why? Because he is a jackass.
1 Comment
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I hate John Madden. But then again, I was happier when we had Dennis Miller manning the booth
What would be interesting (I don’t have the time nor inclination to do so) would be to make a true analysis of how useless and ridiculous players’ unions are for professional sports. Yeah, someone wants to make sure the league minimum is $600K per year, because they might bring in some scab to do his job for $250K… I mean, we look at labor unions as something that are very helpful for poorer and unskilled laborers, not millionaire athletes…