Borges got me...help please

[fgssand]

Below, you will find an email I sent to Ron Borges (I was extra nice so as to elicit a response - and it worked).

He did bring out some interesting points and then slammed BB pretty well regarding his own breech of contract (guess I set myself up).

I would like to see if I can continue my discussion with my new friend Ron. I call on the group to give me a little help.

Re: DB - What should I ask next and how shall I respond to what he wrote?

Re: BB - Anybody with a long memory care to help me refute his slam?


What you will find first is my email to Ron, then his response to me and
finally, I cut and pasted the email headers for verification. Obviously, I X'ed out my name. phone number and email address. Interesting to note that while I emailed him at the Globe - his response was a different email address which I also x'ed out as I did not think it would not be right to release his private email address.

Thanks and see below:

FIRST:

My email to Ron:

Dear Ron,

I am a long time reader of your work. I enjoy your football & boxing coverage very much.

Please help me to understand.....

Is Deion the only player to have outplayed his contract and deserves more money even though he has a year to go until he is a free agent?

Why should he be allowed to breech his contract? If he is then why wouldn't every other player do the exact same thing. Broken down to it's simplest terms - that is what concerns me.

Thanks,

XXXXX XXXXXXX (781-XXX-XXXX)


PS - While I often do not agree with what you write, I do LOVE reading your articles as it is important we are provided information other than what is spoon fed out of Foxboro. I do wish you respected BB a little more though. He has earned it!


SECOND:

His response to me:

Dear Frank,
Thanks for the kind words. As for Deion was told to go and try and make a deal to trade himself. The Patriots didn't have to do that. They chose to do it. And so he did, learning he could make $36 million to $39 million elsewhere for 5 years rather than the $19-23 million NE offered. In fact, he lerned he could get $23M elsewhere in the first three years with over $12 M guaranteed. He learned that because NE GAVE him permission to seek a trade, else he couldn't have done it.
He has a right to withold his services if he feels he's being unfairly treated as long as he's willing to pay the consequences, which he seems to be willing to do. He doesn't HAVE to work there, contract or no contract. Lincoln freed the slaves a long time ago. Conversely, the teams has the right to fine him and they are doing so. They will also go after the remaining 20 per cent of his signing bonus, as is their right as well.
As for breeching of contracts, the guy you wish i respected more BEGAN his head coaching career here in New England by breeching his contract with the Jets. he then refused to go to work and kept $1 M bonus the late Leon Hess gave him a year earlier to stay and take over for Parcells when he retired from coaching. The Commissioner stepped in and it cost NE several high draft choices to get him out of the contract. When someone comes through the door by breeching his contract it seems a bit much to me to hear him or anyone in the organization talking about someone else doing the same thing.
No?
All th ebest,
Ron Borges
P.S. Sadly, I fear this will not end well.



-----Original Message-----
From:
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 5:02 PM
Subject: Please explain - Deion question


Subject: Re: Please explain - Deion question
Date: 9/4/2006 10:19:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
From: [email protected]

 

[primetime]

Ron Borges compared guys playing football to slavery?

 

[Murphys95]

Ron Borges compared guys playing football to slavery?

LOL!!!!! I couldn't read any more after that line! I'm dumbfounded.

 

[PonyExpress]

Arguing on BB's behalf with Borges is about as pointless as trying to convince the Iranian mullahs to ditch suicide bombing.

 

[Box_O_Rocks]

I frankly don't know why you bother....

 

[1976pats]

Borges shot at BB's leaving as "HC of the NYJ" was predictable. Too bad BB didn't hold contracts in such high morale regard as some of Borges' pals such as Tuna.

 

[PatsFan37]

Ron Borges compared guys playing football to slavery?

Oh good grief, I don't like Ron's constant sniping either, but he's pointing out that contracts don't imply indentured servitude. You can breach them anytime you want as long as you take the consequences, which Ron said was perfectly within the rights of the Patriots to administer.

It was a fair and respectful response to a fair and respectful inquiry.

He's right that Deion learned that there is more money elsewhere than here. What he's not mentioning is that the Patriot's offer was not a final offer, but the beginning of a negotiation to which Chayut chose not to respond. The outside offers are final offers made in direct competition with other offers and you shouldn't compare them without mentioning that.

This is where Ron slants his articles, you see, by choosing which facts to reveal.

He's also not mentioning that there were two parts to the trade, and since the Patriots did not get satisfactory compensation, the trade is moot, pending arbitration. (I hate sounding like the lawyer that I'm not -- oh well).

Will it end poorly? At this point, that's more up to Deion than the team. Did the Patriots make a mistake in letting him seek a trade? Since Chayut wasn't negotiating, they may have had little choice.

 

[Sundayjack]

Belichick leaving the Jets was a bad time for me, and I choose to not recall the events.

Beyond that, my only comment is that a guy who writes for a living shouldn't be mispelling the word "breaching" with such ease and regularity.

 

[NE39]

Technically, Belichick did not breach his contract, though he tried to get out of it.

Belichick resigned rather than take over as the Jets HC. He was contractually bound to the Jets, but he didn't want to coach them. He filed a greivance and lost, so the Jets kept his rights. The Patriots then brokered a deal with the Jets, giving up a 1st round pick for the rights to hire Belichick. The Jets held out until getting that 1st rounder, which Kraft did not want to surrender. It took weeks to negotiate, and the commissioner didn't force anyone to do anything.

With Deion, he would like to get out of the last year of his contract to get a big contract elsewhere, but the Patriots hold his contractual rights and the right to use the franchise tag to keep him if they so wish. That is part of the CBA.

Branch may have been given the right to seek out a trade, but that doesn't mean the Patriots are contractually bound to trade him unless they agree on compensation. That isn't any different than what happened with Belichick. The Pats don't have to trade him just because the Jets offer a pick in the same round he was drafted or what anyone else took for a player. They have to offer a pick high enough for the Pats to surrender their contractual rights.

Branch will take his greivance before an arbitrator and lose (just like Belichick), and Pats will retain their rights. No matter what he was promised, the Pats don't have to make a trade unless they get back consideration they are comfortable with. Deion can't breach his contact anymore than Belichick could.

 

[BelichickFan]

The contract thing with Belichick is an easy shot to take at him. And there may be some merit to it technically and legally. However, to a reasonable person it is easy to understand why he did it given that the person he agreed to work for DIED. I realize the contract was with the NYJ, not Leon Hess. But when a person signs a contract for a job and the person he would be working for, and with whom he signed the contract, dies and you have no idea about what his sucessor will be like, it is fully understandable. Especially when the owner can make the HC and after the Cleveland fiasco Belichick knew he probably only had one more chance.

 

[fgssand]

I frankly don't know why you bother....

Pick one:

I was bored,?

Cannot help myself?

Fun & amusement?

 

[njpatsfan]

Belichick leaving the Jets was a bad time for me, and I choose to not recall the events.

Beyond that, my only comment is that a guy who writes for a living shouldn't be mispelling the word "breaching" with such ease and regularity.

Being a boxing "writer", I don't think anyone ever noticed.

R

 

[BelichickFan]

The Commissioner stepped in and it cost NE several high draft choices to get him out of the contract.

This is wrong, it cost one high draft choice. There was a little flip flopping of lesser picks but Borges is overstating it here. Not surprisingly.

 

[Box_O_Rocks]

Pick one:

I was bored,?

Cannot help myself?

Fun & amusement?

Option two matches most closely with the state of sanity I'm sensing....

 

[RayClay]

Ask him why he presumes to know how the Patriots should handle their business when, had they followed his advice, they'd have drafted Terrel, kept Bledsoe outbid the Colts for Vinatieri etc.

Be creative. A simple search of his articles should give you near a complete roster of overpaid, (by Borges), overrated over the hill players and the logical conclusions from staffing his way.

These would include no Seymour, Brady traded to avoid the quarterback controversy, no Matt Light etc., etc.

Too late for me now but I'm sure I could assemble a roster of cap busting turds backed up by the experts own words which you could include in your email.

Maybe Miguel could tell us how much cap space we'd have left after full salaries for Law Milloy Bledsoe and Woody?

The math is beyond me. Have fun and ask Ron for me, Koren Robinson or Terrel instead of Seymour?

 

[shmessy]

1) Question: That $1 million bonus for BB, was it ever expressly WRITTEN into his contract that that was for him as a down payment for taking the HC job in the future for an unknown future owner with Bill Parcells as his boss???? Branch is in breach of a written contract to do exactly what is written in that contract. BB rejected taking a NEW job in a totally new environment than what may have been theorized to him when he signed (i.e. for Mr Hess with Parcells golfing in Jupiter Florida - - - not with Mr. Hess dead, no new owner yet in place and Parcells barking at him from the next office) should not be compared to the Branch situation.

Even with that, the Pats had to give the Jets a #1. So ask Ronnie why are the Pats wrong for wanting to exact the same price from another team???

2) He's being disingenuous and slimy (or just plain sloppy) with his numbers. He wrote: "....learning he could make $36 million to $39 million elsewhere for 5 years rather than the $19-23 million NE offered. In fact, he lerned (sic) he could get $23M elsewhere in the first three years with over $12 M guaranteed."

That's shockingly off. He conveniently forgets to write that the "$19-23 million" he says the Pats offered (I belive it was $19 million) were for 3 (THREE) years, not five - - the way he wrote that to you makes it look like that number was for FIVE years. In fact, it's been reported by many elsewhere that the Pats offered between $30 and $31 million for 5 years.......still not as much as the $36 to $39 million offered by the Jets and hawks, but also without the insulting veto of a 2nd round pick as compensation - - let's face it, they knew that was a deal killer so the veracity of those numbers are in question. The cardinal rule of journalism is to "Get it first, but get it right". He sure is sloppy, with his errors coincidentally favoring his point.

The part of Lincoln freeing the slaves is Borges at his contemptible worst. I can't speak for others, but were I African-American I'd be offended by the analogy.

 

[kolbitr]

I agree wholeheartedly with our GangGreenous friend. It's unnerving for a professional writer to be recklessly using "breech" for "breach".

But...given the former word's original sense of "rear end", perhaps it's somehow appropriate in the context.

 

[DaBruinz]

Below, you will find an email I sent to Ron Borges (I was extra nice so as to elicit a response - and it worked).

He did bring out some interesting points and then slammed BB pretty well regarding his own breech of contract (guess I set myself up).

I would like to see if I can continue my discussion with my new friend Ron. I call on the group to give me a little help.

Re: DB - What should I ask next and how shall I respond to what he wrote?

Ask Borges how he knows exactly how high the Patriots are willing to go when, as he, himself, has reported, Chayut never bothered to send a counter offer and try to negotiate.

Re: BB - Anybody with a long memory care to help me refute his slam?

I have heard these rumblings as well, however, I think that if Borges or any other reported bothered to do some research, they would find that BB probably gave the $1 million back or the million wasn't to keep BB in NY. There were a LOT of discrepencies surrounding the rumors of that $1 million that Hess supposdely gave to Hess.

Also, suggest to Borges that if he's going to slam Belichick for Breach of contract, he needs to slam Parcells for the exact same thing. In fact, Parcells breach was more egregious since he agreed to a contract while still under contract to the Patriots when they were preparing for a SB.

 

[PatsFaninAZ]

"Breech" was misspelled in the original e-mail to Borges, so perhaps he was just repeating the mistake. Now, "lerned" on the other hand is simply astounding.

What a moron.

 

[lobster]

I was impressed with Borges response - clearly he has been thinking about this situation and it's broader implications. Belichick broke his contract because he saw greener pastures elsewhere, no other reason. The principle is largely the same.

On the other hand the league can't have players holding out, getting permission to seek a trade and then being rewarded with a big pay day. That's one reason they have a contract with the players so there won't be hold out's.