I had always wondered why the MLB did guarantee contracts. I think it goes both ways, you either deal with the whining, or you deal with the Eatons.

is to make all contracts guaranteed, but then don’t count performance escalators against the cap. What I mean is, if a guy makes the Pro Bowl, the team automatically pays him an extra $X, and have these escalators be standard across the league. If a corner starts 16 games and makes 6 interceptions, he will be payed $X, and so on…

After this, lower the overall salary cap. Ergo, players will have smaller yearly salaries but will get positively compensated for good play. And, since the smaller yearly salaries will be guaranteed, the difference between today’s guarantee system and the new one will be a wash money-wise.

With a system like this, nobody can complain that he has outplayed his contract, because he will be compensated for his positive contributions above-and-beyond his yearly salary

but if you look at the situation in the NBA where there are full guarantee contracts there are people getting paid for basically being retired and holding franchises hostage.

Without trying to work something out off the cuff, it’s got to be a happy medium, and some other factors need to kick in as well. Make some % of contracts guaranteed… but then we also need to cap rookie pay (you can’t tell me that that issue hasn’t fanned the fire that we now deal with) and give teams some recourse to fight against players that hold out because they want new deals… More than just fines…

The NBA does it right with the rookie cap, but their guaranteed contracts lead to buyout squabbles that rival the NFL’s … How long did Stephon Marbury and the Knicks fight this year, several months? He was due $21 million and they were asking him to stay away from the building. In the NFL, he would’ve been cut and re-signed with a new team instantly.

Also, the NBA’s salary structure has teams making lopsided trades just to get salary relief, or deals that expire in two years just to have a hope and a prayer at having enough money under the cap to sign someone good and try to compete. In the meantime, they tank and that affects competitive balance.

The 76ers at one point were paying Jamal Mashburn, who never suited up for them, several million dollars from an old deal he had from the Hornets, and I think they paid the end of Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson’s 10-year, $100 million contract from the Bucks even though he never lived up to it … and that affected their ability to surround Iverson with a championship supporting cast. The reason they acquired those deals, though, was because they had signed players like Todd MacCulloch and Matt Geiger who had long since ceased to be worth what they were being paid, and the only way to unload those deals was to take someone else’s. (I think)

NFL franchises are much better off because albatross contracts really don’t sink a team like that, and since most teams are hip enough to the salary cap now, if they do have a bad contract that they can’t get out of, it’s usually their own fault.

The players are rewarded by getting guaranteed signing bonuses up front to hedge against the idea they can be cut at anytime.

I’m not saying the NFL’s system is perfect, but it’s much more flexible and allows for teams to get out from under deals where guys have far underperformed their deals.

And if you think about the number of players in the NFL (53×32=1,696), the fact that we have maybe 10 high-profile contract disputes each summer, to me, is just the price of doing business. It’s much better than having teams tank or pay guys superstar money who aren’t even starters in the league anymore.

And let’s not get started on MLB’s big-market/small-market imbalance.

I think a rookie cap would make the NFL’s system much better, if not close to perfect. … and it’ll probably happen soon. That’ll free up more money under the cap (and above the 86% salary floor) for teams to reward the players who have outperformed their deals.