Pattie said:
My answer to that: "oh grow up in that locker room!". This is a business first and foremost and they know that. For God's sakes that's what their agents are for to make sure they get the best deal possible. Deion got that just not with NE. So what your binkie is gone? Milloy went, Ty Law left etc. etc. It happens and is part of the game. Don't expect the team to keep players just because you want him there. The Patriots will hurt in the short term but, as usual, will make out better in the end because of that second first round draft pick. The team admin. Pioli/Belichick did what was in the best interests of the team and not the individual and they've never altered from that pattern. As Brady said if you want money or love more move on because in NE it's all about winning and putting a winning team on the field not just this year but for years to come. Seattle blundered by blinking in the stare down and, believe me, no one will be crying about it when he picks some awesome young talent with it in 2007.
Although I agree with your conclusion, I don't agree that football, even the NFL, is "... a business first and foremost..." Football is a game, a *team* sport, not simply a "business". Ask Harry Frazzee and the other owners (of the Sox and other franchises) who have treated the game as "business": they always end up watching others win the championships because they put their own interests ahead of the team's goal of winning. Football is a sport of skill, brawn, intelligence, and guts, all tied together by the TEAM goal of victory.
Unless the players unite together as a *team* they will not win consistently. For a team to be successful on a regular basis -- and especially when the going gets tough, as in last weekend's first half -- the only thing that will consistently work is a total team effort. One individual will never be enough. If it was, Peyton's Colts or Randy Moss's Vikings/Raiders or any other super-star's team would win it all, regularly. But they don't. Because they don't involve the whole team, only one or two super-studs to save the ranch.
Even on Michael Jordan's Bulls, as good as he was, they absolutely needed role good supporting role players who would do what was necessary for Michael to do his magic. And they did, and so did he, and they won, consistently. Michael made them better and they made Michael and each other better. Same for Larry Bird and his Celts teams. Making others better, as a TEAM. The minute a player stops living for the team's victory and starts living for "his own", at the expense of the team, that player is a negative now matter how much talent he has.
Unfortunately, with players' agents out for only "their" players -- and the rest of the TEAM be damned -- if any player is foolish enough to think he will ever be on a consistently winning team when he and every other player is out for number one, he couldn't be more wrong. It's mutually exclusive for a player to put himself above the good of the team and the team being consistently successful. A selfish player is not a team player.
Brady is unselfish, even though he is very good. Larry, Michael, Bobby Orr, Magic Johnson, Gretsky and others, the same. If Seymour or any of the others start feeling sorry for Deion for being stupid enough to listen to his one-track self-centred agent , then shame on them. They are not going to produce a winning team. On a team the individual player has to make those around him better or he is really not producing the *team goal* of a championship.
All IMHO, of course.
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