OT: "The Business of Sports" Podcast

[Bill Lee]

Since this site has a strong history of interest in the business side of the NFL, I thought I'd take a minute and recommend a new podcast:

The Business Of Sports With Andrew Brandt

The host, Andrew Brandt, has been an agent for a decade and then was Green Bay's General Consul and VP of Player Finance for a decade after that and now runs a Sports Law program at Villanova. He's literally been 'in the room' at all those NFL owner's meetings and player contract negotiations.

So far there are two episodes.

The first was with former PHL and CLE executive Joe Banner, with lots of great discussions about how a team goes about deciding which players to draft, and what the CBA was supposed to do to address the rookie contract explosion by shifting money to veterans and how it's falling short on that score.

The second was super-agent Tom Condon, who has been the agent for players such as Payton and Eli Manning, Drew Brees, etc. He had a long discussion about Payton's recent retirement as well as Sam Bradford's recent desire to be traded by PHL.

He's been a weekly guest on Ross Tucker's podcast and has had a lot of insights on legal things like the Tom Brady case too. He has been in the room for pretty much every hearing on the case so he isn't just lobbing spitballs, he shares what he saw going on in the room. He is a very traditional thinker so he was shocked when Brady won the first appeal and was totally expecting the NFL to win the second appeal.

It'll be interesting going forward what topics he picks to cover and what guests he can get onto the podcast.

 

[signbabybrady]

and what the CBA was supposed to do to address the rookie contract explosion by shifting money to veterans and how it's falling short on that score.

Can you give us more details on what he said the shortcomings are?

 

[Bill Lee]

Can you give us more details on what he said the shortcomings are?

Basically that the rookie money was supposed to be used to make the vets contracts better (and some of it does), but much of it ends up unspent due to the way the rules on spending up to the cap were tweaked at the same time. I forget the details (89% of four year average?) but they leave a lot of room for unspent money especially as the cap grows, and remedies for not spending up to the limit apparently are vague.

 

[signbabybrady]

Basically that the rookie money was supposed to be used to make the vets contracts better (and some of it does), but much of it ends up unspent due to the way the rules on spending up to the cap were tweaked at the same time. I forget the details (89% of four year average?) but they leave a lot of room for unspent money especially as the cap grows, and remedies for not spending up to the limit apparently are vague.

So the greedy owners are just pocketing large portions that used to go to rookies. #integrity