lamafist

I didn't give you a list of examples for 3 reasons:

1) the only purpose doing so would serve would be to derail the thread from its original topic onto a lengthy tangent about whether 'player x' would have been good or not if he'd gone somewhere else. Now that's a fun debate to have, too, and I'm game for it -- just in another thread.
2) I didn't want to respond because you were inadvertently employing a rhetorical fallacy in which you shift the burden of proof on to me. There are two contrary propositions here, "A Players Career Can be Derailed By Playing On a Bad Team" and "A Players Career Will Proceed Independently of the Quality of Team He Starts On." Neither needs proving more than the other.
3) I don't like getting into the list game because the plural of anecdote is not data. If I named a bunch of promising prospects who went to bad teams, and ended up out of the league, what does that prove? Conversely, what does citing Barry Sanders, a player everyone recognizes as pretty much unique in his abilities, tell us about anyone else? Does Jonathan Sullivan's failure w/ the Pats really tell us that things wouldn't have been entirely different if he'd started his career under BB? (Nothing, and no.)


Not to the rookies, it isn't. The agents have taken the rookie pay scale and used it to pretty much lock teams into paying 1st round picks based on what previous picks in that slot have gotten, not how much the team thinks the player is worth.

Whoah, there, nellie. You seem to be getting a wee bit too worked up over this. I'm "yammering on"? I'm "proving that [I] don't understand the current situation"? I "need to educate myself?"

Why do you feel the need to fortify your argument with empty and aggressive rhetorical flourishes like this? Veiled insults don't actually strengthen any point you're trying to make, and, obviously aren't going to convince me that I'm wrong. At best, it's useless posturing, at worst, it's bullying.

Now, as for your assertion that I don't understand what's going in the NFL: nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that I don't think it's a fait accompli that the uncapped year(s) will ever happen. Despite what the scandalmongers in the media want you to believe, I find it doubtful that the owners would ever let that happen, and Goodel's recent comments support that. Furthermore, I think the players have indicated that they're looking to negotiate by selecting an attourney, and not a former player, as their union representative.

So, yes, I believe we'll eventually see a new CBA, possibly after a midnight extension or two. In truth, I kind of assumed that people would understand that changing anything about the draft, let alone abandoning it, presupposes a new CBA being reached, because a CBA is the only way the league could alter the draft regulations.

My suggestion would have to be be part of the new CBA -- and to be honest, I think offering to do away with draft (and also, therefore, the rookie pool) and have players enter the league as free agents would be a big enough concession by the owners to get the players to agree to a cap structure that the owners find more palatable.

Again, the plural of anecdote isn't data. We could both name names all we want, and it wouldn't tell us anything. I'd rather stick with rational generality than ascribe fallacious significance to anecdotal specifics.



I honestly didn't see how it was a counter-argument, hence my asking you to clarify. Now that you have, I can offer my dissenting opinion:

As many in this thread have pointed out, the problem with the rookie pay structure is that 1st round picks -- especially early 1st rounders -- get WAY too much money, completely disproportionally to how much less of a risk they are than a 2nd or 3rd or 4th rounder.

Now, your average late-round draft pick is just happy to be getting drafted at all. They don't expect much, they usually don't end up amounting to much, and the ones who do become players of stature usually are fairly grateful to the organization that gave them a shot. But the guys in the 2nd, 3rd and even 4th rounds, have a legitimate beef right off the bat -- it's natural that they'd make less than the 1st rounders, but not to such an extent. And many of them feel that if it weren't for a senior year injury, an *****hole coach who badmouthed them, unfair rumors about their character, etc., they'd have been a 1st rounder. It's these guys who missed the cut that usually end up having the biggest dustops with their franchises.

Again, I feel like you're making my argument for me: without the draft, there is no "1st round money" vs. "2nd round money." A players' value will be determined on the open market, and there won't be these big arbitrary paygrade tiers. The player will know that his contract reflects what he could get at the time, and not boxed into a ballpark based on draft position. Plus, as I pointed out, he'd have more flexibility in terms of what kind of contract he wants and where he ends up signing.

Not only do I understand that it's primarily the top of the 1st round that throws things out of whack, my whole point is based on that understanding. There is a huge discrepancy in the amount of money these guys make vis a vis how much better of an investment they are, and that needs to be fixed. You could try to do that by artificially tinkering with the structure, but that's going to be a pretty hard sell for something that is at best a temporary fix. Or you could address the discrepancy by having the market set the values, a fluid solution which will adapt when the makeup of the crop of rookies changes year to year.

(continued)

lamafist

Well, you also haven't provided anything to prove it. And even if I ceded the fact, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means, because you haven't begun to consider what a baseline percentage for player re-signing would be. As I pointed out, the majority of NFL players are fairly anonymous JAGs. Their pay will be more or less the same anywhere, so if their original team still wants them, they may as well stay. That's not going to change much whether there's a draft or not. Then you have the star players who are big enough that the owners feel they'd take a PR hit if they left. They often get resigned. That's not going to change much either.

So I posit that the baseline for player retention would be over 50% under any reasonable rookie-distribution system. The question is, would doing away with free agency increase player retention in that key demo -- the 2nd-4th round pick borderline star who's been playing (as you pointed out) for not much more than a 7th round pick for the past 4 years.

Oh, and if you remember, the Portis trade came about because he was making a lot of noise about his contract and threatening a holdout, and the Broncos figured it was easiest to trade him to a team that was willing to pay him.

There are a number of reasons. First of all, without the 1st rounders earning disproportionally more than their worth, the guys who end up 2nd-4th rounders will likely make more than they are now. And if there aren't so many rookies getting ridiculous contracts, then players like Asante don't walk into negotiations feeling like they should have been making an amount of money no rookie should, and that their original team should compensate for the time already served.

Also, the contract that the Asante-like player signs as a rookie will be one he agrees to, determined by what he could get someone to offer him, and not by some arbitrary structure based on pick location, that we all seem to agree is a problem.

Seriously, dude, you need to calm down, and take your rhetoric down a notch. We're all Pats fans here, and to my knowledge, I haven't done anything other than make a point you disagree with. There's no need for the posturing and ad hominem you're giving me. The previous 1,000 words you wrote did a pretty good job of telling me that you think my premise is flawed and that my rebuttals lack facts. After all that, stating so is just trying to position your opinions as "fact" and mine as not, and doesn't add anything to the debate.

Is there really any call for your aggressive and dismissive posture? Are you unwilling or unable to argue without all the dialectical equivalents of stamping your feet and shaking your fists? Or do you think people really take your opinions more seriously when you add in empty, unsupported digs at other peoples' knowledge and reason?

Now, as for your slave auction comparison -- well, the biggest problem with your assertion is that the slaves weren't the ones with the final say over who got them, and they weren't getting the money they were "bought" for. That kind of makes all the difference.

Do veteran players find it demeaning when they auction off their services in free agency? Does the graduating class at Harvard law feel it's demeaning when they take offers from firms' headhunters in the weeks preceding graduation? Do the directors of movies feel demeaned when the distribution rights for their movies are bid on at Sundance?

No. When you get the money, and you have the final decision, having people compete for your services actually feels quite nice.

spacecrime

This thread is so dumb.

There is an issue with about 5-8 of the top picks in the draft, and you guys think it is easier to scrap the entire draft rather than fix those 8.

And the rationale is that the draft is counterproductive to helping level the playing field?

So if the bad teams getting the best players is counter-productive, giving the better players to the good team will be productive?

The only real problem is the first few draft picks get too much money so that if they are a bust, the team is hamstrung with dead money.

But it is still better for a weak team to get to pickahead of strong teams to maintain a better balance.

Scrapping an entire process creates more problems thatn it solves, and in this case the process is fine. It merely needs tweaking.

I keep reading these posts and thinking they are bad attempts at jokes or sarcasm, and then am amazed when I have to admit that you guys are serious.

This is like a debate between astrologers and astronomers about the effects of planets and stars being in "alignment." The arguments put forth by astrologers is so lacking in any semblence of logic or any basis in fact that there can be no real discussion. Same here.

This is the weirdest thread I've seen here since I joined about 9 years ago.

Joker

More weird than the "We need to get Bledsoe back from Buffalo!" thread from 8 years ago?...now that WOULD be weird

mb6592

Because he's appalled that someone would come on this board with an interesting debate that didn't come from him or one of his lackeys. Because you dared to provoke thought on his watch (and with only 147 posts to boot!).

mb6592

Yes, most of us got this.

Deus Irae

Ummm... DaBruinz is having that "interesting debate" despite the many problems with the OP's position. lamafist may not like DaBruinz' style, but DaBruinz posts that way in general, not just because of your "lackey" assertion. The OP did, in fact, concede that his own plan would have all kinds of problems.

The reality is that the draft system, as a whole, is not broken. The pay scale at the top end needs to be revamped, but that's a far cry from completely overhauling a system that's worked for over 50 years in favor of one as poor as the OP essentially concedes his to be.

__________________
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius

condon84

Simple fix to the draft: ROOKIE SALARY CAP.

Fencer

It's not treating them like a piece of meat when they're running the auction.

What he's saying is that teams should STOP treating players like slaves. Maybe the plan is workable and maybe it isn't (I lean to the latter theory), but the idea that his suggestion would be MORE slave-like is possibly the single stupidest thing I've seen on this board ... notwithstanding that I've read quite a number of your other posts.

mb6592

Here we go, here comes tweedle dumb. The "debate" isn't the problem here. "Posts that way in general" - and therein lies the problem. I do agree with you second part, however, lamafist is one sharp dude and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.