Sure Michael Crabtree isn't the first NFL player to suffer from this, but hell pigs and birds weren't the first to have the flu either right?
So for those of you not in the know, the San Francisco 49ers 1st round draft pick finally signed a six year deal with the team this week. I will not get into the details of the deal or the events leading up to it, a simple Google search will get you caught up if need be...don't worry, I'll wait.
If you are reading on I assume you are familiar with the way Crabtree was a holdout since the beginning of this season. I can also safely assume that you know he wanted 7th pick money, without being the 7th pick in the draft. But he wasn't alone in this, he had help.
I am not talking about the posse of bad advise givers, no I am talking about the hundreds of kids coming straight out of college with their hands out, demanding what they haven't earned.
Since when did it become all right for a person who has not performed a day in his job to be in a position to demand anything from his future employer? And moreover, how is it acceptable in a league where there are talented veterans who play for just above the league minimum, that a rookie can expect to get paid at least 10 times that without ever so much as stepping on the field?
Taking this one further, these rookies are basically getting paid for what they did in college. Can doctor's hold out for a better contract because they were good med students?
No, they get to start an internship (if they are lucky) and if they can hack that, then they get moved up to a residency, make it past those tough years, they get to call themselves attending. See the ladder?
They don't start out making Chief of Medicine pay, they start out eating ramen and sharing apartments until their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student loans are paid off. It takes these professionals YEARS to make a fraction of what these NFL rookies make in a season, and they save lives.
I am a firm believer in a rookie salary cap and more than that, I think a rookie should not even be allowed to start until he has been in the league a full season; not play, just start.
Why you ask...
Well for starters, since we are on the 49ers here, Alex Smith. Smith signed a six year $49 million dollar contract. Of that money, $24 million of that was guaranteed. Now, that money is wasted on a player who did not deserve to start and subsequently became a high priced bench rider.
But it's not all Smith's fault, there have been a slough of washed out, overpaid college kids who just couldn't make the transition to the big, bad, NFL. Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, Cade McNown... the list (I found a good one here) goes on and on.
Here is an idea, pay me the league minimum of $310,o00 and let me sit my happy ass on the bench all season long. That way you save millions of dollars for players who have proven they can play at the professional level, and I fill a roster slot that would otherwise be occupied by a punk kid who thinks he has earned those millions by being the big man on campus.
Again, whether is was bad advice, or just a naive college football player thinking he knew what he was doing, I don't blame Crabtree so much as I blame the system.
Until we make it clear to these kids that playing in the NFL is a privilege and not their god given right, their prices and egos will continue to go unchecked.
On a side note, how cool do you have to be to have Deon Sanders and MC Hammer at your contract negotiation... I know right??
P.S. I guess the team who drafted you starting out 3-1 without you kind of backfired huh? Next time don't listen to your cousin, unless he has been an agent his whole life.
No comments:
Post a Comment