Sign a contract, tear it up, write up a new one.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

JIM RUBERA
Special Contributor

(Rubera writes for The Spop, a great web site that delves into sports and pop culture. He is an avid football fan and a terrific writer.  We’re happy to have him on the site)

Darrelle Revis got his way.  With three years (half the time) left on his contract he decided it wasn’t enough and bullied the Jets into paying him. And it’s sickening.  The lack of meaning and honor of NFL contracts have become overwhelming.  They’re torn up and disregarded a hundred times a year.

What’s the point in signing them?  The players have all the power and they always appear to get their way/money.  The reason most players hold out is because they have “overproduced” or “outplayed their contract” and feel they deserve to get paid more.  As we recently found out, this can work no matter how many years are left on the contract.  But the fact remains that there was a contract.  The contract had terms.  The terms were agreed upon by both the player and the GM/owner.  There are signatures to prove it.  It’s a legal document.

In any other walk of life you are blackballed for reneging on your word.  You’re seen as less of a man.  You’re not trusted as much by your co-workers, friends, or family.  People are afraid to give you responsibility.  You’re called names.  Indian giver.  Welcher.  Liar.  Unprofessional.  Deadbeat.  Flake.  Loser.  But in the NFL, anything goes.  Just throw in the word “disrespected” and you can urinate on your contract and be seen as a hero by your peers.

Many fans are also frustrated with it, but for a different reason.  I’m not a supporter of the popular argument of callers to sports radio… “If I walked up to my boss after doing something good and said I want more money or I’m not showing up to work, he’d tell me to go to Hell.”  Of course he would.  You’re not an NFL player and your boss is not an NFL owner.  Yeah, you might get a raise if you do that.  But you wouldn’t stay home and do paperwork in your driveway if they said no.  It’s completely irrelevant.  You probably work in an office or a factory and can be replaced in a week by 1,700 other people like you on monster.com, especially in this job market.  But there are only 1,700 NFL players in the whole world.  So when one threatens to hold out, it’s going to be somebody that will be missed thereby forcing the owner to do something about it; especially since holdouts usually tend to be above average players.

To show how tipped the scale is toward the players, let’s define a couple things in regards to a team’s actions.

Being Right: Getting more than you paid for.  A player who exceeds expectations.

Being Wrong: Getting less than you paid for.  A player who doesn’t meet expectations.

In a time when GMs and owners are scrutinized for every draft pick and trade they make, here is a question.  Where is the reward for being right?  We know for a fact that there is a penalty for being wrong.  Go check Jamarcus Russell’s $32 million in the bank.  The team paid, he underperformed, and walked away with what was agreed upon.  But if a team scouts a player, drafts him, and pays him accordingly for a rookie with a 5 or 6 year contract and the player develops into a stud, the player turns around after 2 or 3 years and says he wants a new contract or else he’s going to make the team worse by not playing.  And nine out of ten times he gets what he wants.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s why Bill Belichick trades away or trades down his first round picks every year.  First rounders and big names get paid a lot.  It’s not worth the risk of being wrong and there’s hardly any reward for being right.  Here’s another comparison for the sports radio crowd.  If you bought a stock for $10 per share and it went up to $50 per share, would your broker call you and say that you were too right and made too much money and that you needed to go back and pay more for it?  I don’t think so.

Here are three different scenarios that could fix this and make it a fair system.

1.  (This one is crazy)  Both parties stick to the terms of the contract.  Let Jamarcus Russell retire at age 24 with $32 million.  And let Woody Johnson laugh all the way to the bank for the next three years paying Revis as a rookie when he’s one of the best players in the league.  No extensions.  The relationship will go for the full length of the contract.  Or at the VERY most, the team can extend the player once he enters the final year of his contract, but the figures for that final year can not be altered.

2.  Reverse the mentality and let it work both ways.  If good players will continue to benefit, then bad players must be punished.  If a player “underplays” his contract (sucks), then the owner can “hold out” by forbidding the player to play and not pay him until the player renegotiates his contract to a figure that better reflects his crappy performance.

3.  All contracts are one year deals.  This one is the most intriguing.  There would be no hold-outs.  Both elite and below average players would get what they deserve and be appropriately paid each year, no bad blood by either party.  Every player would play their asses off each year, not just in contract years, because every year would be a contract year.  Think how much the quality of the game would improve.  Players would be flipping teams all the time, making friends and enemies everywhere.  There would be endless storylines.

None of these will ever happen.  The Players Association would step in as would a hundred other people smarter than me with a hundred reasons against it, most of which I can’t even comprehend.  It’s just fun to casually kick around and dream of a fair environment.

Yes, a lot of this is probably spawned from jealously.  We all think we are underpaid.  So when we see somebody making a sum of money in one year that would change our lives forever, we get a little frustrated when that person says that it’s not enough.

First of all, it is enough.

Second of all, if you want more, do what you said you’d do and earn more when it’s time.

Photo: AP

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