Re: Can someone explain contracts in the nfl? i dont get how they arent guaranteed..
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.
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.
