The Case For A True Rookie Wage Scale

With the NFL’s owners gathered in Ft. Lauderdale for another round of meetings, not much has happened since the last time the guys who write the checks got together in late March.
But there was one specific development that likely has gotten their attention.
One of the league’s 32 owners has committed to paying a player who never has worn an NFL helmet a series of checks totaling at least $41.7 million, regardless of whether said player ever does anything to justify all or any portion of his payday.
And so the current sessions are expected to feature discussion regarding the question of whether a true rookie wage scale should be implemented.
We’ve talked about the issue many times over the years, and we decided to address in comprehensive fashion the arguments for and against revising the current system to limit the money paid to unproven rookies at the top of the draft.
Part one focuses on the arguments for implementing a true rookie wage scale.
Keep in mind that a change would apply only to the top of the draft; beyond the first eight picks, the league has no real issue with the system. By the time rounds two through seven commence, the current approach greatly favors the teams. Players are signed to three-year or four-year commitments for annual minimum salaries and slotted signing bonuses. As to the star players that emerge from this much larger and deeper end of the draft pool (e.g., Maurice Jones-Drew, Marion Barber, Brandon Jacobs, Darren Sproles), the teams get a high level of performance at bargain-basement prices.
So here are the arguments favoring change for the players who end up earning millions, without ever having to actually earn them.
1. The Wages At The Top Of The Draft Are Growing At Disproportionate Rate.
The most obvious proof that a problem exists flows from the simple fact that the contracts paid to the players taken at the top of the draft have grown dramatically over the years.
In 2003, quarterback Carson Palmer received a six-year contract with guaranteed money of $10 million.
In 2009, quaterback Matt Stafford received a six-year deal with guaranteed money of $41.7 million.
During that same stretch, the salary cap has grown from $75 million to $128 million.
So, basically, the salary cap has increased by 77 percent in six years, and the guaranteed money for the first overall pick in the draft has grown expontentially, by 417 percent.
Clearly, something is wrong.
2. The Current System Unfairly Penalizes The Worst Teams From The Prior Season.
The disproportionate growth in the value of the contracts paid out at the top of the draft have made it even harder for the bad teams to improve their situations.
The intent of the draft order is simple. The worst team from the prior year picks first, the second-worst team picks second, and so on.
But with so much guaranteed cash now tied to that first overall pick, the consequences of getting a guy whose talents don’t translate to the next level can be dire.
As Commissioner Roger Goodell said during an NFL Network appearance on the first day of the 2009 draft, the system is “not only having financial ramifications to clubs, it’s having competitive ramifications.”
The mere fact that the Chiefs couldn’t unload the third overall pick in the draft to the Lions for the 20th overall selection and a high second-round pick demonstrates that these top-ten picks no longer possess the value they once did. Under the draft trade chart created roughly 20 years ago to facilitate trades, the Lions should have pounced on the offer -- they were getting extra value equivalent to at least the 23rd overall selection in the draft.
This confirms that too much money is now invested in players whose success and failure in the NFL mimics the outcome of the process for determining who’ll receive the kickoff to open a game. And so it’s no longer a good thing for a bad team to have a top-ten pick. Instead, it’s the kind of risk that keeps guys awake at night worrying about screwing up their selection, when they otherwise should be awake at night worrying about the bad season their team just completed.
3. The Current System Creates Players Who Can’t Be Led.
One of the common complaints regarding the lottery-prize approach to drafting rookies is that the money paid to them often creates monsters.
Young players now find themselves emboldened by their millions. And for good reason. With so much money guaranteed to be paid to the players over the lives of the contracts, nothing they say or do will get them fired in the short term.
As a result, some of these players realize that they need not respond to coaching, and that they need not heed the leadership of veteran players.
These young multi-multi-millionaires essentially run the place, and there’s nothing anyone can do to fix the situation, lest the franchise admit that it was too stupid to realize that the player shouldn’t have been drafted in the first place.
4. The Current System Takes Money Away From Proven Players.
Every dollar paid to an unproven rookie is a dollar that won’t be available to be paid to players who have shown that they can perform at the NFL level.
And the more dollars paid to a player who has never earned a penny playing pro football is a slap in the face to the men who has given their all for peanuts in comparison.
As Vikings defensive end Jared Allen told the Minneapolis Star Tribune after the Lions gave that huge contract with $41.7 million guaranteed to quarterback Matthew Stafford, “It’s outrageous, absolutely outrageous. The guy’s never taken a snap. I’m happy for him, but we got guys in this league that have played 10, 12 years that earn their wages every day and they don’t see that kind of money.”
A year ago, when the Falcons paid quarterback Matt Ryan a deal worth $72 million over six years, one veteran player called the situation “a little disheartening.”
That player, Kevin Mawae, also is the president of the NFL Players Association. Though he later tried to soften his stance, presumably after getting a lesson in the concept of leverage, the damage was done.
5. Agents Are Preventing The Union From Insisting On A Rookie Wage Scale.
The NFL Players Association consists only of players already in the league. Before they’re drafted, rookies are not members of the union.
And since only a handful of the next crop of rookies will benefit from the current system, any vote conducted by the current members of the union surely would result in a decision to redistribute the money to those who already have been in the league.
So why won’t the union simply put the matter to a vote of the union? Because a handful of agents who routinely represent the guys picked at the top of the draft don’t want to lose their three-percent cut of those giant contracts.
The basic reality here is that the agents that routinely land the top players don’t want to give up the ongoing stream of revenue that flows annually from the high-end rookie deals. And so these agents traditionally have exercised significant influence over the union’s resistance to changing the system.
6. Agents Are Taking Unfair Advantage Of The Players’ Leverage.
The contracts have escalated so dramatically at the top of round one in large part because agents realize that they and their clients possess all the leverage.
The last thing a bad team needs after a bad season is a protracted training-camp holdout and, ultimately, the absence of any meaningful contribution from their first-round rookie in his first NFL season.
And so many teams cave to the pressure, overpaying the player in order to ensure that they’ll be able to begin the process of justifying the pick.
Indeed, even when a team tries to take advantage of the leverage that comes from possibly not making a given player the first overall pick, the team still ends up paying too much -- just as the Lions did in their pre-draft deal for Stafford.
7. The Union Knows That Change Is In The Best Interests Of The Game.
Perhaps the best argument in support of changing the current system is that the players’ union knows that such a change is needed, and that it supports the long-term best interests of the game.
But the union has opted to resist change not because the union thinks that the system work. The union has resisted change because the union wants to include the issue in the push-and-pull that is collective bargaining.
So if the union gives up on the issue of a rookie wage scale, the union will get something it wants in return.
It’s an approach that is as transparent as it is short-sighted. On some issues, the two sides need to come together and fix a problem as partners, not as adversaries. On this particular issue, the union’s refusal to recognize that change is needed, all in the name of squeezing some other concession out of the league, fails to serve the interests of the players -- and undermines the greater good for which everyone connected to the process should be aiming.
Coming tomorrow, the arguments against change. For now, feel free to sound off in the comments.