June 2, 2011 · 8:07 AM

Fine for me, but not for thee.

You’ve got to love how college coaches whose compensation has benefited at least partly by the level of NFL salaries can embrace a rookie pay scale without batting an eye.

As Barry Alvarez puts it, ‘‘(t)hat’s just good business.’’

2 Comments

Filed under It's Just Bidness

2 responses to “Fine for me, but not for thee.”

  1. Bad M
    June 2, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    I’m usually a for parity in sports salaries. As a team. It’s better for competition to have a more level playing field. But a rookie wage cap is communist. It doesn’t help parity. The average career for an NFL player is three years. (how long will the wage cap last?) And they will have medical problems for the rest of their lives. If you don’t want to pay them, as an owner, just don’t pay them. It’s not like they can go to another team. If you can’t control your checkbook when you are bidding against NO ONE, then you need to get out of business.
    Of course it “just good business.” Stacking the deck always is…for that one side. Heads I win/Tails you lose.

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    • Go Dawgs!
      June 2, 2011 at 9:39 AM

      Exactly. These teams try to act like they’ve got no choice in the matter. If you don’t want to pay the player, don’t pay him. If he’s one of your draft picks, you control his NFL fate for up to a year. If he wants to hold out and re-enter next year’s draft, let him go for it. Don’t tell me that you think he’ll get that much money from the next team after he sits a year without playing football (or risking injury in the CFL).

      I’m not surprised that a coach would be primarily concerned about his own interests, ie, keeping agents away from his players. I am a bit surprised that a coach would think a rookie wage scale would make a huge difference. The top handfull of rookies get huge contracts. The rest of the contracts aren’t all that big when compared to what an agent can make off of a free-agent veteran. So why are there so many agents sniffing around college players? Because 15% of $1,000,000 isn’t as much as 15% of $40,000,000, but it’s still a whole lot of money. If you can control a rookie’s salary negotiations, chances are you’re going to be able to control his renegotiation, too. Jeff Saturday’s making a lot of money these days, despite being undrafted out of college. I bet his agent’s happy that he was able to secure him as a client when he was working as an undrafted free agent.

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