Players, holdouts included, are living up to their contracts. Their employment is governed not only by their contract with the team, but also by the collective bargainaing agreement between the league and the NFLPA. The CBA stipulates in great detail exactly what can happen when a player holds out, and that contract is every bit as real and as enforceable as the individual contract.
Pro football is a windfall for everyone involved. A player signing a contract knows he can be released anytime the team feels he’s not pulling his weight; a team that signs a player to a low-paying contract knows what will happen if he outperforms that contract. Everybody’s got their eyes open and nobody’s getting screwed.
I agree with Ellis Dee on the retirement, though. To take the debate out of the realm of injury, what happens when Brett Favre retires? In 2001, Favre signed a 10 year contract with the Packers that was reportedly worth $100 million. Do you think he’s going to play through the 2010 season? Say he retires at the end of this season. Who could blame him? He’s had a great career, and he’s earned a rest. Does that mean that he’s on the hook for half of the signing bonus from the ten year contract he signed five years ago, or is that only for players who buck the system?
Agreed, and Ricky was a textbook example of punking out. I guess what I’d like to see is a safety net in there where if you retire before July 1 (or whenever that change of year day happens) you are free to retire without penalty. But waiting until the week before training camp begins? I have no problem with that invoking a penalty.
The Brett Favre example is an excellent one, and better illustrates the reservations I have.
It may not be a more valuable skill, but it sure is a more *marketable * skill, and that is what determines compensation in this great capitalistic country of ours.
I am completely baffled by the animosity people feel for hold-out players. As has been said, their contracts are binding in only one direction. Teams routinely cut players who they deem to be too expensive, and they ruthlessly use that ability as leverage in renegotiations.
And that’s fine. I think it’s a good system for the league as a whole. Nonetheless, there’s a mechanism in place to deal with hold-outs, and the players are “entitled” to every penny they can negotiate out of the owners.
Seriously: Can someone explain to me why the players have an obligation to “live up to their contract” and the owners don’t? When answering, consider that there are recognized, legitimate remedies for each side: the owners can terminate (or threaten to terminate), while the players can hold-out (or threaten to hold-out).
Also consider that the players’ remedy is much riskier – he doesn’t get paid during the hold-out (he is, in fact, fined), he might have to return bonus money, the fans may turn on him (hurting his marketabilty for endorsements and such), and his market value within the league goes down the longer he’s away from the game. The hold-out really puts his ass on the line, as opposed to the owners who cut players.
Sure, just like the owners DID read the Collective Bargaining Agreement before they signed it/.
Communist! As has been pointed out, a skill’s value is determined by supply and demand. There is a large demand for the skills of football players, and, more importantly, an infinitessimal supply. They deserve to paid what the market will bear. (In other words, why are the owners any more deserving? Or should they give away their product for peanuts, too?)
I don’t how it’s determined which players might be obligated to pay back a portion of their signing bonus, but Favre will definitely not owe the Packers dime (and rightfully so). No matter what the reported length and value of an NFL contract, virtually all multi-year deals are, in fact, 2-3 year contracts. After that, they’re almost always renegotiated or voided by the team.
Favre’s contract was no exception. The back end of that “10 year” deal was intended to be make-believe from the beginning. It exists only so that the team can ameliorate the impact of the signing bonus upon the salary cap (until Favre retires, and the cap hit is immediately accelerated). It would, of course, be ridiculous to expect Favre to pay back part of his bonus for failing to play out the part of the contract that all parties recognized as fiction when the deal was struck.
Hold on. What makes you think Favre will retire at the end of the year? He’ll leave after his second Superbowl win. Whether he’ll be younger or older than George Blanda was is the question.
No one wants to take a crack at it? Come on, don’t make me say something I’ll regret. . .
. . . too late. [Troll] I can see now why players complain of racism. This is an oversimplification, but the NFL takes in gobs of money that’s split roughly 50-50 between 2000 mostly black players and 32 white owners. Yet when one of the 2000 players wants to renegotiate his deal, the (mostly) white fan base calls him a greedy, lazy, selfish prima donna, and sides with the white owners. This looks very suspicious, especially considering that the characterizations that usually come up dovetail with traditional black steretypes. [/Troll]
There, that should do the trick.
(I’m mostly kidding about the racism, but really I am curious about the first question.)
I’d take that a step further – you want to retire without penalty? Then you do it before the draft. If Ricky had retired in March of '04, you can believe the 'Fins would have has a much different draft strategy the following month.
(A hold-out is not a legitimate remedy for the player. It is a breach of contract.)
Because that is the contract the player signed. Period. The contract, which the player had no obligation to sign, stated as its terms that it was terminable at will by the team, but not terminable at will be the player.
Now, why would a player sign a contract containing such a terms? Because they are compensated for doing so. They receive a salary for the years the contract is in effect and, more importantly, they can receive a signing bonus that is theirs to keep, regardless of whether or not the team terminates the contract prematurely.
And it’s a fair deal because it spreads the risk. If the player plays better than expected, the player bears the risk of having a contract for less than market price. If the player plays worse than expected, the team bears the risk of paying the player a signing bonus the player hasn’t earned by his play on the field, plus the salary for the year in which the player sucks it up.
Why? Simply ask for more money, or a bonus in the first year, to make up for it. Consideration is consideration; owners pay for that right to cut a player in the second year.
Wow, I’m amazed at you people. I think this is the first place I’ve ever seen that has the right response to, “Well, the owners can cut the player, so the player should be able to hold out,” line of bullshit.
Sorry to hijack, but it’s a positive one! This has been an exceptionally educating post. Thanks to all! This football widow has never understood how these players get paid. Now I do.
Sure - it’s a breach of contract that has specific ramifications that are spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement. If the player is willing to accept those consequences, then I don’t think either side is getting screwed. The owners recognized this possibility and agreed to the specific remedies that they have available in the CBA.
Because that is the CBA the owners signed. Period. The CBA, which the owners had no obligation to sign, stated as its terms that holdouts might occur and that the team owners have limited recourse.
If arbitrators continue to return signing bonuses to the teams that paid them out, we’re going to see a very different collective bargaining agreement (and possibly another work stoppage) next season.
Leave it to a lawyer to hone in on the rhetorical trick I played.
Granted that meaning of “legitimate” is not as obvious as I implied before, I still think that (morally speaking) the word fits. It’s not as if the hold-out is scamming worker’s comp. He declares that he won’t be going to work, and accepts as a consequence that he won’t be receiving game chacks, and will have to pay fines and possibly other penalties. From the owner’s side, it’s acknowledged that this will happen from time to time, and that it’s not a hanging offense.
But, in the vast majority of cases, the risk is not spread equally. Take Javon Walker as an example. His rookie contract included a $3 million signing bonus and will run through 2006, with base salaries this year and next of $515K and $650K. If he’d gotten injured or performed terribly last year, Green Bay would be on the hook for about $1.5 million in dead bonus money, or about 1.7% of their salary cap this year. On the other hand, if he plays like a pro-bowler, fails to upgrade his contract, then suffers a serious injury, he stands to lose tens of millions of dollars, which could be anywhere from 50%-200% of his total potential earnings. Of course, this is exactly what happened.
To be fair, this isn’t always the case. The top ten or so picks in the NFL draft receive rookie contracts that are so far out of whack with their expected value on the field that, in those instances, the team takes on more risk than the player. [Interesting link: did you know that the best pick to have in the draft is not the 1st overall, but the 43rd?] Similarly, teams routinely give foolishly large signing bonuses (bonii?) to declining veterans, who are likely to get hurt or play well below the salary that their reputations have garnered. These players rarely hold out, however.
99.9% of work contacts are legitimately terminable by the worker. Anything else is tantamount to slavery or forced labor. There are always consequences to terminating, and those consequences may not be pleasant, but no contract is going to force a person to work.
The only exception (sort of) I can think of is the military, where you can be incarcerated for abandoning your post, rather than punished monetarily.
If it is technically “breach of contract”, so be it. I’d rather have contracts breached than force people to work against their will.