Extending Peppers

Does anybody still watch the NBA? I can't even remember who won it all last year...Miami?

 

Player salaries are increasing because of the amount of money the owners are making. The salary cap is directly tied to the success and growth of the league. Gone are the days when multimillionaires owned these franchises as status symbols. Most of these guys are making money hand over fist, they are stealing. The NFL is the beach bully kicking sand in the face of every other professional sports league.

This isn't a public service that these guys are doing. It's a big business

 

I don't think baseball has a salary cap, and it does have extended strikes.

Like piper said - it's all based on revenue. The owners will be fine. As fans discussing contracts, we need to recognize the fact that when revenues grow rapidly, a contract from 1 or 2 years ago will not necessarily be in the ball park as a contract today.

Other than that, I don't much think it affects the sport. Guys making 3 million per or 7 million per are still rich guys. It's not like they went from 50 or 100k to millions.

 

the market is adjusting. It's happened before, and it'll continue. The more networks vying for football air time, the higher the salary cap. Trying to bring salaries down by any amount of convoluted incentive package is going to cause mass distress between the NFLPA and the owners, and cease to have football exist as it does.

If you want to blame someone, blame ESPN for paying so much for primetime football. Blame the networks for fighting over the AFC and NFC every time the contract comes up. Blame no one as far as I'm concerned, because contracts are going to go up anyway. If someone's stupid enough to let Leonard Davis get $7 million per year, let them. Davis will never see all that money.


Peppers, on the other hand, will finish his career here, and if he keeps on, the 7-8 years from now that he'll have signed will have given us at least the production we've gotten. We'll see a player, after at least a few more contract renegotiations, in his 30s, who'll have played his career out in our uniform, probably a career worthy of the Hall at this rate.

I'll pay for that, sure. Name it, get it done.

 

That is a good point.

Peppers on defense and Smith on offense should be enough to keep us competitive.

 

IMO it already has

 

how has free agency ruined the game?

 

How many players are drafted by a team and actually spend thier entire career there? No sense of loyalty, even the most amicable of relationships are distanced by "the business".

Football is less a business and more a game that makes a shit load of money.
The business side of it has nothing to do with football itself. Fans buy tickets to SEE the game, but they don't by jerseys to play it...they don't practice cheering for thier team 2 hours a day, 5 days a week...they buy things and attach loyalty to something that holds no loyalty.

That said, it's still the best run League in all of Pro Sports.

 

It's a team game, ultimately, but other than a few careers screwed up with bad decisions, and a few supposed dynasties killed by overspending and then purging, free agency was necessary and hasn't really hurt the game as a whole. At all.