The NFL has seen a situation similar to the Courtship of King James only once, in the very first year of unrestricted free agency. The named plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit that spawned the current labor deal could not be restricted via the franchise tag. Thus, the lead plaintiff in the case, Reggie White, was free to leave the Philadelphia Eagles.
Since the events unfolded in the days before the Internet had developed and matured, the meanderings of the Minister of Defense conjured none of the same attention it would generate today. Even so, it would be nothing close to the LeBron lunacy.
Today, there’s simply no way that an elite player would be able to hold the entire NFL hostage by nonchalantly entertaining huge-money offers and pulling the sheet off his selection in a cheesy made-for-TV event. The best NFL players don’t become unrestricted free agents; they sign long-term extensions, they toil as year-to-year franchise players, or they get traded to a team that will give them the long-term deal they covet.
And while some speculation has emerged that the next labor deal will ditch the concept of the franchise tag, allowing players to finish their contracts and pick their next destinations unfettered, NFL owners likely are watching what the NBA is enduring, and they’re surely swearing that they’ll never allow one man to become more powerful than the sport itself.
So we’d be shocked if the new CBA dispenses with the franchise tag. And if the NFL’s players don’t like it, they can thank LeBron James.
Florio spent all day thinking about a way to incorporate LeBron into a football post. Good job Florio! =)
Mike Florio at his finest. You don’t have to watch, though I know you will.
Exactly Florio. There’s a reason the NFL is the most competitive league in sports. It’s rules like this one. Guys like Vincent Jackson should take notice. The team holds all the cards.
Dear God Please Make It Stop! Here in CLE, we just can’t take it anymore. I don’t wish this on even the most casual fan in any sports town. LBJ lunacy is right, I’m not gonna be able to turn on a TV or a radio for the next couple days.
I’m a Cavs fan and even I think the NBA free agency dog n pony show has become a farkin joke! I’m all but done with the NBA. Lebron and the ridiculous television special to announce his decision have turned me off for good, even if he dies remain in Cleveland.
Here’s to hoping the NFL never gets to the same place with free agency!
The owners want the tags and the players don’t. Could be the bargaining chip that determines whether there’s a rookie salary structure or not.
The franchise tag is unfair because it restricts the movement of 1 player per team while the other players get to freely sign with another team. Most players don’t like the franchise tag because it puts the risk of injury on the player.
Who is LeBron?
I think that I would rather watch a scoreless soccer game with full vuvu’s blaring that watch two broadcasters talk about where Lebron might go. It’s hard to watch sports lately. Almost as bad as “will Michael make a comeback”
The big winner in all this is Rush……and PFT.
Lebron would make an awesome Tightend/Wideout…….
Last year the NFL had the Favre Fiasco, the NBA is loving every minute of this. They have not had this much coverage in July since Michael Jordan was playing baseball. The only way the NFL gets the rookie salary structure they want is if they give up the franchise tag. BTW the Franchise tag is the worst negotiated deal by a sports union ever.
You know ESPN did make him into this. They gave him the attention from the start, televising his high school games. He was practically a household name before he ever even had a high school diploma. He’s been above everyone else since the beginning.
Wow a Florio article I actually like.
Since the Saints won the Super Bowl hell’s already frozen over and pigs can fly. So what else is left?
As long as he first signs with the Cavs then Browns ..we need a wide receiver and then he can go play baseball with the Indians so the Dolans can try to trade him for prospects that may or may not pan out prompting his retirement from baseball .. hell just sign with the Browns and forget about basketball for awhile .
Florio, you present an interesting analogy, but it is flawed. The key difference is in the marketing of the two leagues. The NFL markets its teams, but the NBA markets its individual players. The NFL plays down personalities (there is a reason its called the No Fun League) while the NBA encourages personal rivalries. As such, the marketing of LeBron benefits the entire NBA, not just LeBron. It generates interest.
Now, that said, ain’t nobody worth the coin LeBron is about to pull in. The NBA’s idea of a salary cap is akin to the Cretan labyrinth. I’m not sure how such a pay disparity benefits the competitiveness of the league. At least with the NFL, just about any team can rise up through the league and contend within a few years given competent ownership and management. I don’t think the King James scenario affects the way the NFL will manage itself one way or another. The salary cap is critical to maintaining competitiveness in the league and for keeping costs under control. Ticket prices are already crazy, and I’m sure that the NFL does not want to see the fan base fall away as it has with the NBA.
i hate the NBA, i hate ESPN, i hate lebron, i hate ilya kovalchuk too for the same (but much less publicized) reason that espn and lebron are making me hate them right now, i want all of the above to go away
@Nam
Lol my thoughts exactly. Whatever at least we can all talk about it though. Who else is thinking he stays in Ohio with Bosh and they don’t win a championship for at least another free years?
NOWATHAND:
well sai,but there will be so many haters on this comments section havin hear attcks complaining about his espn press confrnce! lmao i dont complain when i see poker or bowling on espn,i just dont watch it. get a life lebron haters!!
Didn’t Deion Sanders do something sorta like what LeBron did. Not saying he is the same player but I remember post-Reggie White signing with Green Bay that a lot of attention was paid to where Sanders was going.
I hate Cleveland. But, LeBron is a good Obama supporting liberal Democrat. Love it! He’s not one of these knuckle-dragging, empty-headed, right-wing, dumb-jock types like many of you dummies that post on this board.
The FA spectacle when Deion Sanders left San Francisco to sign with Dallas was actually bigger than Reggie White leaving Philadelphia to sign with Green Bay.
Remember, the nature of Basketball lends itself to 1 person being bigger than the sport. A star player without a supporting cast can still make the playoffs and can still fill the building.
A star QB without an OL and a set of WRs, at least both adequate, won’t be a star QB.
You’re comparing “Apples to Oranges”!
Yeah, waiting for Lebron’s decision is a lot worse than hearing Chris Johnson (rightfully so) and every other player b!tch about their contract all offseason long.
You’re right, they should be thanking Lebron James; this is a huge bargaining chip for the players.
The owners can only circumvent the players’ employment rights because the players have relinquished them in the collective bargaining agreement.
The owners are taking a huge risk letting the CBA end. They really wont enjoy having to follow the same rules as normal businesses.
Lebron James — so good at basketball that he runs the NFL.
The NFL would be wise to allow something like this. It’s been a lot more interesting than the NFL’s free agency period
Fed up
Way to bring in the politics for no reason….and you are right, most Obama supporters have only bothered to graduate from high school.
How can you claim this is bad for the NBA? You just mentioned the NBA and Lebron in July and this is a bad thing for them how? If the NFL was getting this much attention in their offseason Florio would be talking about how great it was for the league and how it proved the NFL is king. Though I am not denying the NFL is the #1 league right now, I find it comical and hypocritical that Florio is claiming their ability to have a special broadcast for a free agent signing as a bad thing for their sport and something the NFL wouldn’t want. The NFL would love it if they could get a special ESPN broadcast of a free agent signing and not just a 1 minutes story on sportcenter.
So basically they can blame ESPN.
Great article Florio! All these slappies banging on you have no idea how ridiculous the NBA has been for decades and the LBJ sideshow is just another example.
Calling for a 1 hour broadcast on ESPN to announce where he will play next is the most pathetic thing I have ever heard, including the whole Favre drama over the years. I hope the NFL never allows anyone to pull that with them. The top guys in the sport- Manning, Brady, Brees, Andre Johnson, Fitzgerald etc are class acts and would never stoop to this kind of level for attention.
High school drop out or not, they’d still be smarter than George W. Bush, Glen Beck, and Caribou Barbie:)
Seems like there’s more people who care about Lebron James than there is actual NBA fans. WTF? More people watch professional bowling than an NBA game. but now every one in america is on the edge of their seats to find out where this guy plays next year. Then next season all these NBA fans will watch like 3 quarters of a Lakers game or something. damn get a hobby people. casual fans are retarded.
if you love something then be a fan and take it seriously. enough with this water cooler bs “man that lebron is just amazing. that guy is just on another level!” because they saw a 2 minute highlight special on sportscenter the other night. like all these guys are talking about sports because they think thats how you relate to other guys but none of the guys talking about the NBA actually give a crap about the NBA.
i am a football fan. not a sports fan. i do not care about lebron james.
The NFL has it’s show ponys also. Brett has held us and the media hostage for like the last three offseasons. Don’t you guys call it “Brett watch” or something?
So LeBron is an NBA player?
No wonder I never heard of him.
LeBron James is proof that you need an entire team to win a championship, because he’s won zero of them in Cleveland during his tenure. But why do these NBA teams pursue him then? Because owning an NBA team is more about making money than winning titles. We have only a couple of those types of teams in the NFL luckily.
I’m waiting to see the NBA team that signs him lay off their other players, seeing as they won’t be able to afford them anymore.
One of Florio’s better posts. Makes sense, which is a start for you, mike.:)
As to the point about avoiding this circus, you forgot to mention it helps when team members don’t bang the star players mom.
There was NEVER any credible case that the franchise tag (or its partner, the transition tag) was ever going to be eliminated in the new CBA. The tag is an important tool and owners should have that right to keep a star player on their team; also it requires them to pay big dollars to the player in question. The case against the tag has never made sense.
The last time the NFL had a player that was on par with King James; his name was Jim Brown.
FED Up
Get with the program. This is a sports site, not Democratic Underground.
Check it out. You’ll like it there.
Had Jerome Brown not died, and had Reggie White stayed, the Philadelphia Eagles would have 2 or 3 Super Bowl Trophies!
Of course, had Norman Braman not stupidly fired Buddy Ryan, and hired the inept Rich Kotite, Reggie White never would’ve left the Eagles!
Jeff Lurie looks good when compared with Norman Braman!
I don’t always agree with Florio, but I’m with him all the way on this one.
Wade, Bosh and Lebron have all played this scenario for whatever they can get out of it. Bosh and Wade have both filmed documentaries on their FA odyssey – which I believe was mostly manufactured. I think both have known they’d be in Miami for a while. And James is having a show to announce where he’s going?
The whole thing is a joke. I can’t say I was ever a big NBA fan, but after the garbage that’s gone on this offseason I can guarantee I won’t be watching any basketball next year.
Oh, enough with this nonsense about calling Lebron James the “king.”
A king with no crown er I mean ring?
I like many on these boards would only watch an NBA game if I only had two channels and the other channel was showing soccer!
That being said, if there is any current player in the NBA who deserves to be called “king” it is the alleged rapist and a man with many rings: Kobe Bryant!
At least Kobe has earned the accolades and not given himself the nickname “king” like the narcissist Lebron James!
Fed Up,
I’m Fed Up with liberal morons like you and your clown king Obama!
Go to the Daily Kos and quit pleasuring yourself to your “yes we can” poster.
Florio has a legitimate case. Look, the NFL doesn’t have the same kind of buzz during the free agency period and that’s because it’s really NOT free agency for the super stars like the NBA. When a guy like LeBron becomes an unrestricted free agent, the ONLY thing keeping him in his old city is he fact that he can sign for more years, a higher rate of yearly increases and thus, more money. On the other hand, if Peyton Manning comes on the market the team will end up using a franchise tag on him that will keep him off the market or make his signing prohibitive.
Of course, with the NBA and the sign-and-trade concept, you’ve got another twist added in that keeps the buzz going because then people start talking about what players or choices will trade hands and whether they were really worth pursuing.
If you look at what happened just in the first day or two of NBA free agency, the ENTIRE NFL free agency period so far hasn’t generated that much in media coverage and hits on the Net, especially this year when the NFL has clamped down on free agency with the rules that they put in place for this situation.
They call him “King James” because clearly he runs the NBA.
News for you my man, the owners will not have the final say over the franchise tag. That will be negotiated, and I believe will not be a part of the next agreement. Just another bullet point for those who thought Upshaw was too soft with the league. Count me as one of those people.