pats_ftw!!1!

^^^^ i dont understand how they aren't 'guaranteed' as they are in baseball. what does that mean?

Va_Pats_Fan

Lets say the pats cut Tom B tomorrow. He doesn't get his salary.

aluminum seats

It's a ridiculous system, making a mockery of the idea of a contract, and it's the one thing that players who hold out have in their column on the righteousness scale. We get pissed they don't honor their contracts, but management doesn't have to. It's lame and should be changed--the Pats are smart enough to not have a problem with it, while other, stupider franchises will be further destroyed.

Miguel

A contract in baseball usually guarantees the entire amount of the contract. That is, if Big Papi signs a 5-year $75 million he will get the entire amount even if he gets hurt or his skill vanishes.

In football very few contracts have ever guaranteed the entire amount of the contract. Most of the time it is just the signing bonus that is explicitly guaranteed.

Please note that if a vested veteran is on a team's Week 1 roster and is later released, he can later ask for termination pay (his yearly salary) which is why you will hear that a vet's salary is implicitly guaranteed.

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mcbee

I think that's a stupid way to look at it. The "contracts" are structured so that management always has the option of cutting a player. Whether that's good or bad...it's NEITHER. The players KNOW this and for that reason, get as much signing bonus as they can. It's their choice.

Really the contract is that management has to pay them the stated amount to keep them off of the FA market. Management always has the option of cutting them and putting them on the FA market. That's the nature of the beast...as long as players know this going into a contract, there's nothing wrong with it.

It shouldn't "be changed". If it was all guaranteed teams wouldn't sign more than 1 year contracts with players. They couldn't afford to take the injury/talent risk. Ever think of that? Then there'd be no team cohesion whatsoever. Brilliant. Such is the price of "doing the right thing".

aluminum seats

Don't get so hysterical. Several plans have been discussed in the past that would largely mitigate many of these issues, such as injury early in a contract. And like I said, smart franchises wouldn't be signing lots of mediocre guys to lengthy contracts.

What's more, even if one decided that non-guaranteed contracts were to the benefit of the league, it's certainly not true that it's equally good for the players--they are perpetually one play away from being SOL.

Pujo

That's why signing bonuses, which are guaranteed, are a significant part of almost every deal. It makes sense for competitive reasons to allow a team to cut a player at any time.

Patsfanin Philly

That's also why a baseball player goes on a 60 day disabled list for a blister while football players play in pain as a rule to a greater extent. The baseball player has no worry about being cut, he'll get his full ocntract (no need for big signing bonus). Football players have an incentive to get out on the field or risk being cut and as such the powers that be generated bigger signing bonuses...

Vern

This is a common misperception. A contract is an exchange, period. When a player is cut, ownership HAS stuck to the contract, because the player agreed to that provision. Pretty much every single person reading this right now works for their employer under the same contract -- you get paid if you work for them, but if they fire you, you no longer get paid.

In fact, it's pretty much ONLY in MLB where even if you are fired for any reason, they still have to pay you. You can litterally show up and burn down the stadium, and though you go to jail for arson, they still have to pay you no matter what you do. That's the weird system if you ask me, where the player makes no guarantee of performance, beyond just showing up, and must still be paid anyway. Even contractors and builders have to actually build you something to get paid, not just show up on site and act busy.

Having said that, the real difference between the MLB and NFL is in the collective barganing agreement. In the NFL, teams and players have the freedom to negotiate what elements of a deal are guaranteed (such as signing bonuses and Roster bonuses, or even salary) and what parts are not. In MLB, a player and a team are not allowed to negotiate such a contract*, all of them must be guaranteed or they cannot be approved. For example, a few years back the Pats negotiated a fully guaranteed contract with Adam Vinatieri. Asante Samuel's current deals is also fully guaranteed salary this year. It is allowed in the NFL, but players typically prefer to go the route of other guarantees, such as a Signing Bonus. Also, the NFL has also "Roster Bonuses" which is a guaranteed lump sum you get if you are on the roster as of the specified date. This allows the player to have the guaranteed full amount of that bonus, so long as they are on the team as of that date.

*The only MLB exception I can think of to the converse, is that you can work out "option" contracts, such as the one Tim Wakefield has. In that case, the team is said to have "the option to retain" the services at a fixed price. However, MLB limits options to a yearly basis, so that once the option is activated for a year, that entire year becomes guaranteed.

If it makes you feel better, you could just re-arrange semantics, and say that every NFL contract is in fact a big guaranteed Signing Bonus followed by a series of "Option Weeks" that the team holds - if they exercise the option each week by continuing to retain the player's services on the roster, then the player will be paid at that amount. In fact, I bet the contracts are written exactly that way in legalese. The idea the contracts are somehow phony or an abomination is just a product of sportswriters being too dependent on agents for info. To stroke the agent's ego, they go and report the money as if it is real, when it is really a team option to pay it out. The fake part of it only allows the agent to puff himself up. And the sportswriter blames the union or the "system" for their own stupidity.

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Vern

One other thing to add is that the money IS guaranteed IF the player actually is on the roster that week. So the team cannot just decide not to pay you. They have to cut you. This is why a guy like McGinnest got cut a couple years back - because he was contractually guaranteed to be paid if they did not.

So really there is nothing go on here, but the fact the team has the option to stop the agreement at certain points in the deal.

(Also, some players have actually negotiated this right for themselves, so that they can opt out of a deal too. But usually, they just write in a giant Roster bonus or other trigger so that they will either be paid a huge amount, or force the team to cut them so that they can get a new deal. )

As Mike Reiss always says, all this stuff is more about book keeping and legalese terms, not about any real agreements or not.

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