Wow, it has been more than three weeks since I last wrote in here. Shameful, I know. I have been very busy teaching CSE271: Programming in C & the UNIX Environment. I have also been putting off publishing because I was writing an extensive post explaining my political philosophy, and now I am not sure whether or not I even want to publish it. Anyway, I’m back!
All right, Sentinels. Listen up. There are some who will say that your accomplishments today will soon be forgotten, that you’re not real players, that this isn’t a real team. And I say that’s bullshit. Because as of today, you’re all professional football players. You’re being paid to play, and I want to you to remember that, because the men whose places you’ve taken forgot that a long time ago. Let’s bring it in. Let’s play some football.
If you follow the Philadelphia Eagles, and who in their right mind doesn’t, you are probably aware that first-round draft pick Broderick Bunkley has yet to show up at training camp. Why not? Because his agent and the team ownership have not yet agreed on an employment contract. In the meantime, coaches are consistently frustrated by their lack of time to work on getting him up to speed on the NFL, and particularly the Eagles system.
We can get an idea of how much money Bunkley is holding out for by observing the contract recently offered to Kamerion Wimbley, the player who was drafted directly before Bunkley. Wimbley’s contract is for a guaranteed $9.3 million and a potential $23.7 million. Most likely, Bunkley will be looking for just slightly less than that.
The situation with Bunkley is not at all unusual. In fact, this story reports that the second overall draft pick, Reggie Bush, may choose to simply not play this year and re-enter the draft next year if he cannot get the kind of contract he wants. This is especially absurd considering that Bush left college without graduating so that he could enter the NFL a year early.
I am not generally one to complain about professional athletes being paid exorbitant sums of money. If their skills are that rare that the market will bear millions of dollars in salaries, that is fine with me. I understand that negotiations are a natural thing; that it is in the best interests of the team to pay their players as little as possible and the best interests of the players to be paid as much as possible. But when we are talking about around 10 million dollars minimum, I don’t think you need to quibble and pout.
You know what I think the whole problem is? Agents. Sure, they are necessary to make sure that players don’t get taken advantage of by unscrupulous managers, but in the end they are just middlemen trying to make as much out of the deal as they can. In the meantime, they convince players that they “deserve” big contracts, and that to be paid a mere few million dollars is unfair, or an insult. Unfortunately, if you hear that enough most people will start to believe it. At some point, players need to get back to realizing that they are getting paid far more than a livable wage to do a job that they love and that many other people, given the opportunity, would gladly do for free.
I will put some more of my thoughts on professional sports on here soon, I promise.