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Parity or Parody?
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by Bill Chuang, Head
Columnist, 4/30/07
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Parity- equality, as in amount, status,
or character
Parody- any humorous, satirical, or burlesque imitation, as of a
person, event, etc.
The powers that be in the NFL love to trumpet the idea of parity.
That is, all poor teams have an equal opportunity to improve and all
great teams will eventually fall back to the pack. The instrument
of this parity is the NFL draft, the most recent version of which
regaled us for the past two days. As we all know, the worst teams
get the earliest picks and the best teams pick later. Thus the
worst teams presumably get the better players to eventually improve and
maintain parity. This anti-Darwinian, survival of the weakest
concept has effectively maintained parity in the NFL since its
inception. There are several forces, though, which have cropped
up recently to challenge one of the great cornerstones of the NFL.
First is free agency. Basically any team with the money can buy
any player. Player movement can be limited somewhat with the
franchise and transitional tags, but if a team wants a player badly
enough, they find a way to get him. Last year, the Seahawks put a
transitional tag on their star guard, Steve Hutchison. This would
allow any Seattle to match any offer, or if they did not match, receive
a third round pick in compensation. They had every intention of
matching any offer, so were confident they could keep him a
Seahawk. Minnesota made Hutchison a huge offer, but included
within the contract was a provision which made the entire contract
guaranteed if he was not the highest paid lineman on the team.
Since Seattle already had Walter Jones, they could not make Hutchison
their highest paid lineman, so could not match Minnesota’s offer, and
lost him, with only a third round pick as compensation. In an
unwise tit-for-tat maneuver, they then used this so called “poison
pill” device to then grab Minnesota’s receiver, Nate Burleson. Within
his contract was a provision that made his contract guaranteed if he
played more than 5 games a year in the state of Minnesota, which the
Vikings obviously could not match. Both teams were called before
the commissioner for these moves and though both transactions were
allowed, both teams were reprimanded. Though no general policy
against this type of transaction was developed, it was clearly against
the spirit of the use of the transaction tag, rendering it basically a
useless tool. Because the NFL strives for parity, allowing
essentially free player movement could potentially skew the competitive
balance toward certain teams. The NFL players association of
course wants as much potential player movement as possible because that
means more money for the players.
Money is the other factor which the NFL uses to limit player movement,
in the form of the salary cap. A certain percentage of the total
NFL revenue will go toward player salaries. That number is
divided by 32 to determine how much money each team can spend on
players. When free agency came to the NFL in the 80’s, the NFL in
its wisdom, also instituted the salary cap to ensure that no team could
simply outspend the others, a la the Yankees. Each year the cap
increases, and most teams spend close to that that cap
limit. Starting in the mid 90’s, teams found a way around
this as well. Basically by structuring a player’s contract so
that most of his money could come in the form of a huge signing bonus
or other guaranteed money, that bonus could then be spread out equally
over the life of the contract so these teams could get around the cap
by signing as many stars as they liked, but pushed their salaries to
later years. The downside is the “salary cap hell” which these
teams later experienced, but by that time, they would hopefully have
bought themselves a championship. This strategy was used
successfully by Dallas and San Francisco, in both cases to get Deion
Sanders, to win championships in the mid 90’s. Baltimore and
Tennessee also used this tactic to build their Super Bowl teams.
Dan Snyder, owner of the Redskins, uses this tactic seemingly every
year, but luckily for the rest of the league, he and his staffs are not
very good judges of talent.
There has been a trend brewing in the NFL for the past few years.
Namely, established superstars, on the downside of their careers,
giving up more money elsewhere or even coming out of retirement to play
for a consistent winner in order to win a championship before they
retire. That consistent winner is usually the Patriots. The
most egregious example of this the recent Randy Moss trade. That
the Patriots were able to obtain the best wide receiver in the league
for a 4th round pick is almost criminal. True, any team could
have give the Raiders a 4th round pick for Moss, but it has been
rumored that Moss, who needed to agree to restructure his contract
prior to any deal, preferentially gave the Patriots the best monetary
deal, making it easier for them to obtain him. There has been
some discussion on the sports talk shows about Moss being a locker room
cancer; he does not go all out on every play, yada yada yada. The
fact is, Moss did the same thing in Minnesota and was still the best
receiver in the league. His sub par production in Oakland was due
to the fact that Oakland quarterbacks could not throw to him when they
were running for their lives or flat on their backs. Moss is only
30 years old, and does not appear to have lost a step. He can
still out jump and outrun any defensive back. I have no doubt he
only played at half speed last year, but can you blame him knowing that
there would be almost no chance of having the ball thrown his
way. In New England, he will not only have Brady throwing to him,
but he will have the extra incentives of free agency next year, and a
chip on his shoulder to show everyone who passed on him that he is not
washed up.
I’m not sure what I’d be thinking if I were Tom Brady (besides the red
or black Ferrari, and what superbabe I’d knock up next). On one
hand, he just got the best wideout in the league. On the other
hand, defenses around the league may decide they cannot possibly cover
all the Patriots receivers, so may just decide to kill Brady on every
play. In addition, this team which was already favored to win the
Super Bowl will now not only have to win it, but probably have to go
16-0 with scores of 42-10 every week, or their season will be
considered a failure.
This was all certainly done within the rules, and it is probably only
temporary because once Randy Moss hits the free agent market next year,
the Patriots won’t be able to keep him, but for at least this one
season, the NFL will be more parody than parity.
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