I never got why there was heat on a player for refusing to play for the team he was drafted by.
Can you imagine getting an engineering degree and a firm on the other side of the country you heard had a bad reputation claimed your rights out of college?
Or what if you got a teaching degree, and there was a teacher draft, and you were the top teacher graduate in the country, maybe worth a six figure contract, and some high crime school in the Bronx picked you because they were the lowest ranked school in the country, and because of that you were forced to sign a contract for $36,000 and you had no choice but to sign with that school for low pay and risk getting shivved?
It doesn’t happen that way in the job field, however we expect athletes to follow the same rules we do.
I get these are extreme examples, but I never held it against top draft choices like John Elway, Eli Manning, Eric Lindros, Kobe Bryant, JD Drew or others who were put against the wall by inferior franchises who “drafted” them and told these cats “You MUST work for US” and they responded with “Awww HELL no!”
Yeah, the sports world is weirdly regressive in that way; I assume it’s a residue from the macho mindset that permeates the whole thing. Fans almost always side with the billionaire owners over the millionaire players.
It’s more a case that the fans want the sport to be competitive. Otherwise the best players would just sign with the best teams as in college football. The players tolerate it because they too see the business value of a competitive league. So the compromise is that new players start out with few rights, but gain more as they become more established.
I get it. As a longtime Bucs fan I feel the same way about Bo Jackson. I’ll admit to an irrational hate for this guy still. It’s not ever going away. I understand that his reasons for doing what he did were more valid than these other guys, that it went far deeper than ‘I don’t want to play for you’ yet it still grates on me.
For the record, I have always disliked Elway, Manning, Dorsett and guys that I knew pulled this type of thing. Now I have to take Elway off the list. If he admitted he was being a jerk how can I hold that grudge? Bo, I don’t think I’d be able to get over it at this point ( told you that the feeling was irrational ). It’s been a part of me for so long and it doesn’t affect either him or me enough for me to proactively try to stop hating him now.
Because how are bad teams supposed to get better? There is a reason why the worst teams get the higher draft picks. If the good teams are allowed to poach the top draft picks as well as snatch up free agents competitiveness goes out the window. It’s bad for the sport.
The great thing is these football players presumably earn degrees and are free to enter the job field if they choose. Then they can live and work wherever they please.
And the top overall NFL draft pick ain’t making $36k so that analogy doesn’t quite work. Professional athletes catch a little hell when they pull this because they know the deal when they sign up for the league and frankly, it’s hard to sympathize with someone who’s about to sign a multi-million dollar contract.
The “deal” is if they want to be a pro football player, they HAVE to accept working for the team they are drafted by. And theres only one NFL, a duly adjudicated monopoly, btw. So the “deal” is forced upon them.
Most Americans would grow weary of the perrenial dominance of Manchester United/Bayern Munich/Real Madrid. Those teams make the New York Yankees look like losers.
So think of the NFL the company. You can work at our San Diego branch or not at all. Nothing is “forced” on them, they’re free to sit out, play in Canada, or work in a different field.
Well, working in San Diego isn’t practical for me, and anyway it seems like a really toxic environment at that branch (might even be bad for my long-term career prospects), so I think I’ll exercise my right to contract and seek employment with one of the company’s competitors instea…
Oh. You mean the company has no competitors? That if I don’t want to work for them I’d have to leave my chosen profession? Well, in in that case I’ll at least try to negotiate before signing their restrictive employment contract – now, while I still have some leverage. Surely everyone can understand that, yes?
It’s also a sport where all the top leagues are utterly dominated by a handful of teams.
North American sports fans expect most teams to have a chance, someday if not today, of winning it all. It’s the nature of the market. A team that goes on a dominating run for a few years is fine, but the sort of thing you see in the Bundesliga, where Bayern Munich wins two thirds of the championships, would not fly. The level of competitive imbalance in the top tier soccer leagues would be to the detriment of the sport’s popularity.
Drafts were introduced in part to stop that sort of thing from happening in order to increase popularity and the value of the less successful franchises. Between 1947 and 1964 the New York Yankees won the American League pennant 15 times out of 18 tries. During that time the growth in attendance was stunningly low, considering how much wealthier people were getting; most growth was due to franchises having to move to new cities in an effort to find more fans. They held the first draft in 1965. That isn’t entirely a coincidence. The explosive growth in popularity of baseball and American football in the late 60s, 70s and 80s coincided with a period of time in which there was a great deal of competitive balance. Hockey has done much better as well than in the days of the Canadien, Islander and Oiler dynasties.
Some people just can’t seem to wrap their minds around the idea that professional athletes are labor, even the guys signed to multi-million dollar contracts. They’re going to have many of the same interests as Joe Blow factory worker.
And unlike many Joe Blow factory workers these days, professional athletes have players’ unions that collectively bargained with the leagues for whom they work.
Do you also feel bad about players who get traded from one organization to another?
What, trades? Well, when players are traded they may be headed to a team that they aren’t so interested in playing for. It’s not so unlike the draft where a player can be chosen by any team.
If a traded player didn’t like his destination and decided to retire, would you say he was deserving of personal criticism for bucking the league’s framework for player movement?
I would say if a player retired and stayed retired, I have no problem. Same as if the drafted player decides to go do something else if he doesn’t like the team that drafted him.
If there is some loophole that allows a player to retire and then un-retire to avoid playing for a team, then yes, that’s flakey and he’s deserving of criticism.
And the point is players in the NFL, or most professional sports organizations, don’t get to choose their teams (other than in free agency, obviously) and I have no problem with that.
Well, wouldn’t the existence of such a “loophole” be the fault of the league? After all, they could have eliminated it during negotiations with the players.
Right, it’s not illegal to take advantage of an oversight. But that doesn’t mean people won’t think you’re flakey to do so when you’ve violated the spirit of an agreement.