Friday, January 30, 2009
Hannan / Sports Sorry Nashville, Albert Haynesworth is Right to Scoff at a 'Hometown Discount'
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 5:50 PM
This morning, Nashvillests Christy and Morgan referred to Titans All-Everything defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth as a "brat" for not accepting the team's initial contract offer. As a restricted free agent, the Titans have exclusive negotiating rights with Haynesworth until February 27th. Thus far they've made one offer that wasn't close to what Haynesworth says he's looking for; something in the range of the $32 million given last year to Vikings defensive end Jared Allen.
Not knowing Mr. Haynesworth, I'm entirely unqualified to speak for the man. But I will say this: Not only is he within his right to say "no-thanks" to the Titans, he'd be a fool not to hold out for something better.
Football is played by mercenaries. Unlike baseball or basketball, NFL players rarely have the money in their contracts guaranteed. That's why, whenever you hear of a new free agent signing, you should almost always discount the numbers being thrown around on SportsCenter; six years for $65 million makes an agent look good, but it doesn't mean a thing if the player blows out his knee and gets cut.
Because of this, and the violent nature of their sport, football players, even more so than other athletes, are under more pressure to get that one Even My Great-Great-Grandkids Will Be Living in a Gated Community contract. Haynesworth, coming off a fourth-place vote for Defensive Player of the Year, has said as much.
From today's Tennessean:
"You want to try and make as much as you can because if you have a career-ending injury you are out ... and the team sure as heck is not going to pay you. It's not like baseball or basketball. You want to get as much as possible.''
Blunt he may be, but brat he is not. Haynesworth is just being honest. If he's expected to risk life and limb for a team that may not honor the contract they offer him, why should he do anything less than hold out for a max deal?
Comments (8)
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Cool, well, if you bothered to read the rest of the blog regularly, you'd know that we make comments like that pretty often and never really claimed to be an authority on sports contract negotiations. And seriously? If anyone's going to complain about sarcasm in blogs, I can't imagine why it would be you.
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It's a good thing he plays football because he would be in prison or bagging groceries. What a loser, he was hurt quite a bit. Let him go Titans.
In this economic era, when business are laying off people by the thousands - daily. Yes, he's being a brat. He plays a game for a living, and they're offering him 32 million. And yeah, yeah he could injure himself and his contact would be cut short - big deal. Then he might have to do something else for a living that didn't involve running around a field. I care not one bit about him whining on about how he's not being offered what he wants. They say 'Brat', I say that's too kind of a word for the attitude that he's displaying while hundreds of thousands of folks are contemplating how they're going to put food on the table.
Christy -
No malice meant. Nashvillest has been on my Google Reader for a while now and, honestly, your "brat" throwaway was just an excuse to make a point I wanted to make anyway.
And Northrup, I see what you're saying. As my boss Pete said, in this economy it's awful hard to make an argument for the rich guy. But in the wake of the link below, I feel more comfortable taking sides with Albert and other NFL'ers holding out for their big payday.
http://deadspin.com/5141905/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain-on-football
Albert. Get yourself paid, bro. Make that rich Houston oilman dig keep in that back pocket and hand you his carbon-soaked cash.
You've earned it.
Hey Caleb,
I'm with Northrup.
So you think that football players deserve tenos of millions in compensation because of the potential for CTE?
Explain the salaries for baseball,hockey, basketball, Metro middle school teachers and registered nurses.
You lost me there, Grumman.
Your question seemed to suggest that I said football players deserve the large contracts they demand because they run the risk of brain damage by continuing to play. Then you grouped in a whole bunch of professions, some of which share that risk (hockey) and some that don't (Metro middle school teachers), that wouldn't seem to have much in common.
I'm not going to run the fool's errand that is defending the overinflated salaries of professional athletes. It's hard for me to get worked up about it.
Networks pay the league billions for the right to broadcast, owners split up the booty, players get the trickle down. Maybe there's a new angle to the tired old rant of a society with misplaced priorities, but I don't know it.
My only point was to say, in the relative arena that is professional sports, football players are on the business end of a pretty rough screw job. If you disagree with that, I'd love to be persuaded otherwise.
