The Players’ Manifesto: Stop Backing Sports Owners
The newest member of “this athlete needs to stop being a greedy baby” club is Joey Bosa, a defensive end out of Ohio Sate who the San Diego Chargers grabbed with the third pick in this year’s NFL Draft. Most of the details of rookie-scale contracts are set in stone since the onset of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, but there are two main points Bosa is angling for in his negotiations with San Diego, as he has yet to sign a deal with them despite the season being just weeks away.
One issue is the deferment of his signing bonus. Bosa wants more of his signing bonus now in the calendar year 2016, as opposed to the end of the NFL’s operating year in March 2017.
The second issue is the offset language in his contract, which details how much money Bosa would stand to make if he were cut in the fourth year of his standard rookie deal as opposed to having his fifth-year option getting picked up. Without offset language in his contract, Bosa would be able to make all of the money set into his contract despite being cut and his contract not being picked up for a fifth-year option. With offset language, the Chargers could cut him at a lesser cost.
Over the months of negotiations since late April’s draft, Bosa’s camp has indicated that he would sign with the Chargers if he was given just one of these two negotiations points. Not even both of them! Per SB Nation, only one top-five pick since 2012 (when the new CBA began to affect draft picks) hasn’t had at least one of those two concessions in his contract. Bosa currently stands as the longest rookie holdout during the era of the current CBA.
All contracts in sports should be guaranteed, especially so when the players are the reason these owners, such as the Chargers’ Alex Spanos, are making barrels of dough each season. This is even more true for the NFL, which has the worst protection in terms of guaranteed money of the four main North American sports leagues and also poses the greatest long term health risk for its players.
If Bosa were to get nagged by injuries throughout his contract and his play suffered, the Chargers would likely cut him at some point. Why shouldn’t he get the money both parties agreed to in that contract to allow him to deal with those health issues for the rest of his life?
This isn’t the only instance of calling players greedy the NFL has seen of late, as Von Miller caused a mild controversy earlier in the summer with an Instagram post detailing his refusal to play this season under his current contract situation:
Here are some of my favorite replies to Miller: both from Instagram and his Twitter account (any grammatical and spelling errors are courtesy of these fine products of the American educational system):
- @davon2123: @blain_rex he doesn’t deserve anything, and I’m sick of people saying professional athletes deserve these monster deals. If he loves the way he says, he’ll shut up and play ball period and let he’s action speak from themselves. If they choose to pay him great, if not, go somewhere else it’s that simple.
- @dom_i_geek: You’re already making millions. Sure, you bust your ass day in and day out to play a tough game, but are getting paid to protect this country or save people’s lives? Because the people that do get paid to protect this country and save people’s lives don’t get paid nearly as much you do. Sure, if you want the extra money so you can give to charity or to help out others, but not so you can buy another car (as if you couldn’t do that with the money you already have)
- @dnvrsangel: @Millerlite40 When it becomes about anything other than the ‘sport’ you ‘say’ you love, it’s very disheartening for us, the fans.
- @PWizzle_Acosta: @Millerlite40 it’s always about the money isn’t it. You’re worth it but show some class.
“Show some class,” huh? Talk of class in this situation is pertinent, but not necessarily the “class” this character above is referring to.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Von Miller is an athlete by trade, likely one of the two or three best defensive players in the NFL at the moment, and is coming off an MVP performance in the Super Bowl this past February, the pinnacle of American sports. Super Bowl 50 generated “at least” $620 million for the NFL this year for a single four-hour game, one in which Miller was the top player. As a member of the winning Denver Broncos team, Miller brought in a playoff bonus of $102,000.
That’s one specific situation that pits the ownership/administration against the players in terms of financial strife. It gives some context to the overall issue Miller, other athletes like Bosa, and, ultimately, all workers come across all too frequently. Miller did, fortunately, finally agreed to a $114.5 million extension in July after a lengthy public battle.
I understand why these differences in wages occurs in American sports. It’s just ultimately a product of the capitalistic society of today. What I don’t understand is why casual fans, much like the ones who populate players’ social media feeds and mentions, tend to side with ownership, who, from a socio-economic standpoint, should be the group they distrust the most and have trouble relating to, as opposed to players, the workforce and entertainment who cause fans to tune-in to games in the first place.
There are 18 NFL owners who are billionaires. The NFL’s other 14 owners sit quite comfortably in the nine-figure range. They are the antithesis of the Average Joe fans who plop down on the same sunken part of their couch every Sunday afternoon, crush a 12 pack of Miller Lite, and then take their dog for a long, life-pondering walk after their favorite team blows a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. These owners don’t know how much a gallon milk costs and operate on a different spectrum of reality.
Miller and Bosa don’t go to the commercial real estate firm or warehouse the average NFL fan works in and complain about workers asking for paid vacation and sick days. There’s this antiquated notion that fans would “play for free” because this is “just a game” and not a real job. First of all, that’s complete bullshit. No one would work a full-time job, much less one that could leave you with brain damage after just a few years of playing, for free. Also, it’s illegal.
Football, and sports in general, are just games, sure, but they’re ultimately games that these fans are pumping billions of dollars into per year in the form of ticket purchases, merchandise sales, and cable subscriptions (the NFL made $7.24 billion alone in the 2014 season). “Teachers and fire fighters should make more! These assholes just play a game!” is a common refrain too. I would agree that teachers and fire fighters should get paid more! Absolutely! But what does that have to do with Bosa wanting extra protection in his contract in the likelihood that he suffers a debilitating injury and can no longer use football as a source of income after his rookie contract?
The Chargers had the third pick in this year’s draft. The Philadelphia Eagles traded up to the second pick in the draft with the intention of selecting whatever quarterback between Jared Goff and Carson Wentz was available to them 10 days before the draft. San Diego essentially had 10 days to begin negotiating this deal before they even got to Draft Day and to get an idea of how Bosa would want his rookie deal structured. They failed at that. It would’ve been easy to go in another direction and select another player, say, Jalen Ramsey of Florida State, but the Chargers chose not to. Pay the man the damn money he deserves.
If Spanos wants taxpayers to fund a new fucking stadium worth $1.8 billion instead of paying for it himself, he can at least throw the biggest building block of his team’s future a few extra million dollars, instead of dragging him through the mud by making the details of his contract negotiations public.
The continuous behavior of fans backing ownership, “the logo,” “the team” over the player perplexes me. Why support billionaire owners who profit exponentially off this game in comparison to the millionaire players, many who come from rough upbringings and backgrounds that fans could certainly find more relatable?
It’s nonsensical. As soon as an owner is done with a bottom bin player and he can’t bring it on the field as much as he once did, he’ll be kicked to the curb with no guaranteed money and watching games from his couch on Sunday after slugging through the work week like the rest of the Average Joes.
