32 men are set to become very wealthy Thursday night. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would like them to become a little less wealthy on draft night in future years.
“We want all of our players to be paid appropriately. When you are
coming in as a rookie, there is still some question about whether you
are going to have the ability to play at the NFL level,” Goodell told Darren Rovell on CNBC Thursday morning.
Reducing rookie salaries will be tricky, but this is an area in which many NFL veterans will agree with Goodell. He wants the money redistributed.
“An extraordinary amount of money that is guaranteed — $600 million of
guaranteed money will be committed over the next three days,” Goodell said. “Some of those
players won’t make it in the NFL. That money goes out of the system.
We would like to keep that money in the system and make sure it goes to
veteran players because they have already proven that they can play on
the NFL level.”
JaMarcus needs to get paid and laid.
This should also keep these guys in college until they graduate.
I agree.
The posterboy for this is Jamarcus Russell.
There is no rule saying that owners have to pay rookies the kind of money they have been. I know the agents would cry collusion but they owners would be smart to say no tho the huge rookie contracts.
Well that just makes perfect sense. Now get er’ done.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… stop talking and do something about it!
Hopefully there will be a rookie wage scale in place by next season for the NFL Draft in 2011.
I don’t think the Patriots want to pay over 50 million to a rookie when they exercise the first pick in the 2011 draft they received from the Raiders for Richard Seymour.
10 of the 32 men might be in the league in 4 years, that’s a bit high too.
Let me be the first to say: “DUH!”
This should have been taken care of years ago. I really don’t think the San Diego Chargers got their $11 million dollars worth out of Ryan Leaf back in 1998.
C’mon Roger….”the money goes out of the system”?
What does he think, the rookies might be aliens and take their signing bonus to Alpha Centauri once they get cut? How about some beat up vet who signs a mega deal then ruins an ACL in the next training camp. Or shows up 45 pounds overweight and gets cut. Where does that money go?
The rooks are being paid for 4 or 5 years of hard work in college on the football field off the top. If they were hockey players, basketball players, or baseball players, the best of them could have been playing professionaly since they were 18. Football prospects spend those 5 years of their lives living in dorms and worrying about accepting a free pizza for fear of losing their scholarship.
I like the part about Goodell talking about the money going out of the system. All of that guaranteed money, for what? When you look at stocks, every broker has a disclaimer “Past performances don’t guarantee future earnings.” Same thing applies with football.
Teams shouldn’t be financially strapped if they have a bad season and are stuck drafting high in the first round. I don’t think that rookies should play for less than their market value, but there should be a system in place, at least letting the rookies EARN their contract, not have the majority of it guaranteed to them, while we frequently hear of decent, franchise caliber players being cut for “salary cap casualties”
@ Rosenthal,
It’s sad that it’s amateur hour on PFT on draft day.
How would it be “tricky”? The NFL can easily make a deal with the NFLPA to restrict salaries. The incoming players aren’t even members of the union yet. How do you not understand something this obvious?!
Easily done.
Players will agree to lower rookie salaries in exchange for maximum rookie contract of three years and complete unrestricted free agency for all players after 3 years with no RFA, TRansitiom, or Fraqnchise desgnations.
Goodell should give more to our armed forces veterans.
There is no rule saying that owners have to pay rookies the kind of money they have been. I know the agents would cry collusion but they owners would be smart to say no tho the huge rookie contracts.
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I agree 100% – what’s stopping the rams from telling Sam Bradford, “Hey, we’ll give you $10 mil over the next 2 years and a $5 mil signing bonus.. if you play great, then we will redo your contract and you will get paid. If you don’t want to sign, we’ll sit on the rights to your name until the next draft. good luck getting picked #1 or even in the top 10 after sitting out an entire year”
I don’t understand why more teams don’t do this kind of bargaining.
Amazing how clearly one can think when you remove thy cranium from thy keister! The ideas that are produces are asstounding… and with the oxygen that can be absorbed there should be more that enough energy to finish the task.. so quit talkin crap and start getting some shiblit done!
“Goodell wants more money going to veterans”
News flash: Goodell wants more money to go to everyone.
I largely agree with Rick. Owners just bend over and let the agents dictate that outdated and ridiculous “slotting system” that seems to embody the rules that a guy drafted higher than another MUST get more money, and that each successive year MUST pay more than the previous year. Both are BS, and the owners need to reach down, cinch up their nut sacks, and tell the players how compensation is going to work if they want to play for their team, the union and agents be damned.
The veteran players that want more money then the rooks are the same guys that wanted the big contract when they where rooks. That being said, I say a big “DUH, YA THINK?!!! Proven professional athletes making more then unproven rookies? Wow, what a concept!”
Sounds good to me, or heck, lower the cost of concessions
that would make me happy too.
THAT WOULD BE THE SHIT. IF EVERY NFL PLAYER NEEDED TO HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE.
I agree with this 100%, I have been saying this for a few years now. I am glad someone heard me lol!!
This should also keep these guys in college until they graduate
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Really, did it help the NBA? Ask Kentucky….
My proposed solution:
A team should own the rights to the person they draft for 3 years.
Goodell should create a rookie compensation package that is the same for all teams. The player has a set starting salary based on the round, position, and pick he is drafted. This would effectively eliminate holdouts as a player would either take that money or not play football. The player would then get a 10-20% salary increase in Season 2 if they decide to keep them. If not, they could release the player, but that player could not sign with another team for more than they would have signed with their original team, blocking any purposely disgruntled players from cheating the system.
After two seasons of structured pay, the team can then negotiate an extension if they like what they see and pay market value to the player to extend beyond that 3rd year (this would be the big payday). If not, it then becomes a situation very similar to a regular NFL contract. The player either plays for the team in the last year of his deal, making another 10-20% increase over year 2, or the team trades the player.
This incentives all rookies to play at their highest level to make the big sums of cash – thus making the league that much more competitive. 3 years is typically enough to see if someone is going to pan out or out. Of course this might create havoc on someone drafting a QB to replace another QB with the incumbent knowing that in 2 years, he may be gone. On the flip side, a team can develop a QB and trade for high value after that 2nd year without taking on much financial risk.
This really smells of a quick switch scam to me from Goodell. Get all the vets riled up so the league can reduce rookie bonus money, then give a portion (but not all) of the money saved to the vets.
First of all, out of that 600 million, a huge portion goes to first or second round draft picks who don’t get cut for at least 3 years. The guys who get cut are late rounders and undrafted free agents, who come out of it (after spending 4 or 5 gruelling years in college) with just enough bonus money to tide them over until they can find another occupation.
Goodell is shovelling crap here. The guy would be a formidable politician, but even if he was elected President he would have to settle for less power than he has now.
Agreed. The NFL has needed a rookie cap for many years now. Too many veterans have been cut or underpaid in order to clear space for these unknown quantities. It’s ridiculous. I would love to be paid for “potential” but that’s not how the real world works.
It sounds like Goodell is trying to get some of the veterans on his side for this CBA battle. They have already been hurt with the FA period.
If they can make more money when the CBA is settled, they may try to force the union to accept a proposal.
You would have to raise the minimum salary for veterans. Then you would have to mandate a team minimum for how many veterans and how old on each active roster. That is the only way to keep teams from cutting veterans in favor of younger, cheaper players.
I don’t see it happening.
Money out of the system? What system? There are only ‘economic’ systems.
This isn’t US dollars leaving the US economy. Or someone like Derek Jeter pretending to live in Florida to avoid N.Y. state taxes.
Don’t you have a degree is economics Roger?
Seriously brain dead comment.
Absolute pandering. The day after these kids are drafted and get their bonus money they consider themselves “veterans” and will be on board for limiting the money allocated to the next crop of college prospects. So he is preaching to the converted, with the only potential losers some as yet to be identified college kids with no say in the matter.
There should a be a rookie cap that gets adjusted each year like the team cap did with the old CBA. The NBA did it and it added some semblance of sanity to rookie contracts. Rookies sign those contracts because they don’t have an alternative other than the CFL or AFL.
Another thing that you guys don’t seem to take into consideration is that certain positions have a short shelf life and they would NEVER see the fruits of their labor rewarded after their rookie contracts have run out.
LT, for example, is going into his 10th year and has been considered damaged goods and won’t get the kind of money that he got as a rookie or his second contract. In fact, SD forced him to restructure his contract so that he would be able to stick around last season and then threw him away after they got all they could out of him. Tom Brady, he’s missed one season with a serious injury BUT he’s still got a few very good pay days left.
That guaranteed money that they take away from the rookies WON’T make it back to the guys that YOU might think and if it does, it will be the guys like Brady and Manning, who were going to get theirs, anyway. Like it or not, the owners don’t like paying money unless there’s an upside and the 48th-53rd man on the roster isn’t going to give them much of an upside unless it’s their cheap salary. You can blame the overpriced rookies all you want but even the teams that doesn’t have overpriced rookies cut veterans to pick up cheap undrafted rookies for 1/2 the price.
Rookie cap sounds good, busts hurt teams too much and they take money away from the guys out there beating their bodies up for their teams and the “shield”. Guys like LT and Larry Johnson who took 400 carries a year for multiple seasons. Players should make the money, not draft busts.
“the best of them could have been playing professionaly since they were 18.”
You have to be the most delusional armchair GM I have ever seen on this site. There are light years of difference between playing in HS and the in the NFL. The only HS player that has ever been seriously said could have jumped straight to the NFL was Earl Campbell. There is no way on God’s green earth that an 18 year old HS kid could remotely pick up the complexities of an NFL offense or defense. You obviously have never played the game at any level and therefore believe that anyone with speed, size, or good hands could make the jump. Unbelievable.
This makes too much since to become a reality!
YES less for rookies/more for proven vets and short contracts 2/3 years.
This should be the EASIEST part of the labor agreement. I mean, who has an interest in keeping the system the way it is who also has any control over the process? The college players? Nope. The agents? Well, not beyond their manipulating the players!
The league wins, because the money stays in the league, and they get a big win with the fans for doing this (and bringing it up before the players, they get the added bonus of perception that it is completely their idea). The players win because they get more money for the vets. The fans win because we are sick of seeing 50 million go to some kid who has never played a down of NFL football, and is likely to become a spoiled failure as he is a success.
Heck, even the college players win. instead of being spoiled brats with tons of money and no reason to actually perform at a high level, they will have the proper motivation to prove that they belong in the NFL and be paid the big money.
You take 10 people, and give them 50 million over 5 years to do a job, with 30-40 mil guaranteed whether or not they suck, and 8-9 of them will suck at the job. They already have more money than they could ever need. Their lives have already changed to “elite.” Why on Earth would they bother to actually work hard? Only the 1-2 guys with a chip on their shoulder or a true work ethic will actually strive to succeed.
Oh, and I think this gets done by next year. I just can’t see the Pats trading Seymour for a 2011 first round Raiders pick if they didn’t have a good idea that a rookie pay scale was coming.
Unless they trade it away in the next couple days. If they do, you know that negotiations are going poorly, and we aren’t likely to have an agreement any time soon.
They need to address this in the CBA negotiations next spring. Absolutely something needs to be done about how much money these rookies are making. That particular action really needs to come from the Union; I believe the owners side with Goodell in the method of thinking that these guys are given way too much bargaining power for not having stepped onto an NFL field. However the veterans need to make it known to the Union that they want something done. If not, then the agents will continue to extort millions from NFL franchises for their clients who have yet to establish or prove themselves at the NFL-level of play.
By the way, it seems some of you do not understand what Goodell is saying by money moving out of the system. He isn’t suggesting it moves out of the US economy. What he is saying is these guys get guaranteed money over X number of years, and a lot of them do not make it that long. They get their money but do not participate in the NFL. That is what he means by money leaving the system.
While it is true that this happens with Vets who get injured etc. it does not happen to the degree it does with rookies. Injuries are also accidents. You simply do not know if your career is going to end on Sunday. With the rooks you KNOW that a good many of them will not be playing in the league in 3-4 years. Some of them might actually be able to play in the NFL, but can not justify the huge expense, so they do not get picked back up.
The way it works now is like the military accepting everyone into the special forces and finding out later if they were good enough to do the job.
Hey decibels, I said “playing professionally” not necessarily in the NFL. Baseball kids usually spend a few years in the minors. Hockey prospects as well. If all that talent wasn’t tied to colleges there would be more viable feeder pro leagues for the NFL.
At Ohio State in 2004, Ryan Kesler was a soph hockey player with the Buckeyes at the same time as Mo Clarett launched his lawsuit to leave the football team and enter the draft. Kesler signed a multi million dollar deal to play for the Vancouver Canucks at the age of 19. Clarett, who was a year older, and had a much more significant freshman year as a football player, had to sue to even be drafted, much less signed to a pro contract. Is that right?
A lot of the football players don’t earn their first dollar from the game until they are 23 years old. International soccer teams start supporting prospects when they are half that age. If the football kids have to wait an extra 4 or 5 years to be paid, they deserve to be paid well. At any point over that period they could incur career ending or curtailing injuries that render them unsignable.
Matt schaub (PRO BOWL MVP) just received a $10 million option bonus.
Bradford will probably get at least $20 million just to sign.
What’s wrong with this picture????
Totally agree with this. I’m a Giants fan and even though I was happy to see Brian Dawkins leave the Eagles there’s no way in hell that he should have had to leave that team because of money. I’m sure if the Eagles could have took enough rookie money to give to Dawkins and have him stay they would have.
TexansMike says:
Matt schaub (PRO BOWL MVP) just received a $10 million option bonus.
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You’re kidding, right? Schaub did NOTHING to earn the contract that he got in the first place. He threw 160 passes, 6 TD and 6 INT in 3 years and went from the bench to the 7th best paid QB in one year. He was paid for POTENTIAL and not performance by the Texans. Yes, he earned his money and got an option bonus but he didn’t do anything tangible to get it in the first place.
Alright, my 1st, 3rd and 4th comment made it but not my 2nd. Was it that link to another blog that had a breakdown to the guaranteed money that Stafford REALLY gets?
“When you are coming in as a rookie, there is still some question about whether you are going to have the ability to play at the NFL level,”
The commish is playing at understatement today I see.
Some question ? Since something like half of all picks are busts, its a hell of a lot more than “some question”.
Both sides are in favor of a rookie wage scale so it won’t be that big of an issue