I honestly believe that we will never see professional athletes like Chipper Jones or Derek Jeter ever again – players who spend their entire, legendary careers with one team.
Outside of all things World Cup, one of the more notable stories in the world of sports is that both LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony have opted out of their existing contracts and will become free agents. This basically means that both players chose to leave a whole lot of money over a short span on the table, so that they can pursue new contracts worth even more money over a longer span.
From the financial, personal standpoint, this completely makes sense. When the day is over, both LeBron and Carmelo know that professional sport have a very finite amount of time, and they’re trying to amass as much money as they possibly can, to ensure the financial security for themselves and their families.
But to fans, and those who love the romanticism of sport (like me), it’s seen with usually disgust, accusations of greed, and as a slap in the face to the sport that affords them to live their lifestyles. Frankly, it’s not like either player were making food stamps; LeBron left nearly $43 million on the table over the next two seasons, and Carmelo walked away from $23 million guaranteed for next season, to pursue newer, longer and more lucrative contracts.
And the thing is, this is not a new trend, it’s just that LeBron and Carmelo are two of the NBA’s biggest names in which is being drawn into the spotlight again. It’s happened several times over in baseball, with players exercising their opt-out clauses, and then signing new contracts for even more money over a longer period of time.
But what opt-out clauses do in my opinion is that they create time frames for players to exercise artificial effort, and to give a false sense of loyalty and longevity to teams, their cities and their fans. All of which is kind of unappealing from the perspective of thinking a guy is coming aboard to a place because they want to win, and not just because the most money is being thrown their way.
For example, LeBron James signed with the Miami Heat in 2010, on a six-year deal worth roughly $110 million dollars. Never mind the circus of “The Decision,” and the fact that us 99 percenters will never see a million dollars much less 110 million in our lifetimes. The fact is, James joined the Heat, and it’s was assumed that he would be a member of the Heat until the end of the 2016-17 season. No, thanks to the opt-out clause that would be available to him at the end of the 13-14 season, it essentially really meant that it was a four-year deal.
This doesn’t mean that he’s guaranteed to leave the Heat, it’s just that the Heat will now have to compete with all the other interested NBA teams, and in all likelihood, have to commit more money over a longer span of time, in order to keep him in Miami.
The thing is that off the top of my head, I’m hard-pressed to recall an instance in which a player didn’t capitalize on an opt-out clause if they had access to one. Both Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia opted out of their contracts with the Yankees, and signed new longer and more expensive contracts with the Yankees, and ultimately stayed. Rafael Soriano on the other hand, opted out of his Yankee contract, and signed a longer, more expensive contract with the Washington Nationals.
But back to the point, free agency has already kind of killed the romantic idea of a player staying with one team throughout their duration of a long and successful career, since frankly not every team can always afford to pay players what the market dictates what they should be making, and as stated above, players are trying to amass as much money as they can, so they’re almost never going to take a substantial paycut, for the love of the game, unless it’s fairly inconsequential. Opt-out clauses just make it even easier for players to game the system and game teams, because they’re usually asterisks and overlooked foot notes on what sound like longer-term contracts.
I get the importance of trying to amass as much money in a short amount of time. But it’s also not like guys are locked into unfair deals in the first place; Both LeBron and Carmelo had already made well over $50 million in their careers, and guys like A-Rod and Sabathia, and even Rafael Soriano were well millionaires several times over when they opted out and sought new contracts. Intelligent care of finances should make just about anyone to have ever gotten a signing bonus fairly well off for their lives as long as they don’t try so hard to live above their means.
Ultimately, what I dislike is just the escalating rise of professional sports salaries in general. It’s getting pretty absurd that nine-figure salaries are becoming more and more the norm, for a bunch of grownups playing kids games at a highly competitive level. And that unions and associations protect them from ever going back down to much more comprehensible numbers. Inflation can only be cited so many times, but in the end it’s still more about greed than anything else.
Guys like Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter played their entire careers on the same teams that drafted them. Sure, there have been instances where it was injury or slump years that made it circumstantial for them to stay with their teams, but there have been numerous instances where both of them could have chased the dollars and gone to whomever was willing to pay the most. But ultimately, they both realized that at those points, they had already made millions on top of millions of dollars already, so what was the point of chasing another million, when their original teams were already offering up something remotely competitive?
This is getting too long, and I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the bottom line is that I think opt-out clauses are further killing professional sports, from a love of the game perspective. It just makes it easier for players to appear more to be chasing dollars, than trying to play to win and aspire for championships, which is ultimately the reason why fans root for teams in the first place. But there’s also been little indication that professional athletes care much about fans in the first place, so I guess there’s that to consider, or rather not.
