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This is the most hypocritical column you’ll probably ever read. Enjoy.
You may have heard of this dude named Leonard Fournette. To hear people speak of him, he’s the first alien-human hybrid, made after years of testing in some underground dungeon in Latvia.
He’s some amalgam of titanium, Martian smarts, Godzilla, Adrian Peterson, and Batman. Yet, instead of sending him out to immediately take over the galaxies and at the very least, take over Earth, they’ve decided to test his mettle by seeing if he can play football and deal with Les Miles.
The prerequisite for taking over the human race is playing football in the SEC and not going completely insane hanging out with Miles. I should take that back. You could probably sell this idea to a hard core group of fans.
At any rate, this Fournette fellow is pretty good, and he has people convinced he is ready for the NFL. The only problem for all of these idealists is that the NFLPA and the NFL mutually agreed that you’re not going to the NFL unless you’re at least three years out of high school.
Mark my words: you will hear the national media at some point soon take up this soap box of alleged unfairness.
They’re wrong, of course, and this is coming from the guy that routinely admonishes the idiocy of the NBA’s one and done rule, and not because it should be longer, but because it’s flat un-American to ask high school players to not be able to professionally enter a league where they’ve seen widespread success going beyond any of the doom and gloom stories you see passed around.
First, the NBA.
From 1995 (when Kevin Garnett led the charge of preps to pros) through 2004 (the second to last year the NBA allowed preps to pros), 33 high school players bypassed college for the NBA. Of those 33, 29 were chosen into the first round, which, in the NBA, guarantees at minimum three years on a six figure pay check. By the end of 2004, the league minimum was just under $400,000 annually.
That means that if you’re good, bad, or indifferent, those first round guys are making at least a million bucks in three years. You ask most anyone to take that regardless of their own professional success those three years, and holy Toledo, are they taking it. So are you, reader guy.
The only argument against preps to pros in basketball is that NBA general managers aren’t very good and just drafted these kids on potential, and then when some of them became busts, blamed it on youth rather than piss poor scouting. If the kids didn’t get picked, they wouldn’t have kept going pro, though.
The NFL is markedly different, mostly because football is different from basketball the same way baseball rules are different from the NBA’s and sports like tennis or golf … the hell with it … you can play for dough at 14 professionally if you’re good enough.
In 2004, Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett lost a landmark case basically asserting that the NFL’s three years from high school rule was bunk. One of the arguments used by the NFL was that physically, players at that age simply aren’t ready.
Generally speaking, your body is fully grown sometime in your early 20s. The sheer violence of professional football is not that of basketball, or really any other sport.
As hypocritical as that looks, it’s akin to saying that even though being a brain surgeon is a heck of a lot tougher than being a welder (sorry, welding takes immense talent, but it’s not poking around in someone’s central nervous system), if someone wants to be a brain surgeon, the requirement should last no longer than that to be a welder even though it takes significantly longer to really be ready to be a brain surgeon.
Not all sports are created equal. It is what it is.
That’s a more wide-ranging argument, because the brass tacks of it is that the NFLPA agreed with the timeline, so you’re losing in court anyway. It’s why you don’t see high school players challenging the NBA’s rule even though it’s stupid. The NBAPA agreed to it. End of discussion.
The over-arching point here with Fournette is that we tend to want to change the rules for the many to accommodate the very few. There are concerns for guys like Fournette. The violence of football could see him get injured and put a major dent into his future finances.
That’s sort of the nature of football, though. And don’t get me started on suggesting he sit out a season to preserve himself. Players play. It’s what they do. Most guys play intramural basketball games into their 30s and 40s with injuries or when they shouldn’t and then hobble around the office like the Crypt Keeper for two days recovering. Players play. Don’t try to change that.
If the rules were bent for Fournette just because he’s part bionic (kidding), players that aren’t ready will go before they’re ready, and since the NFL isn’t the NBA, probably won’t be picked. Even if they are, well … the NFLPA negotiated non-guaranteed contracts too, so there’s no real incentive for a general manager to keep a bad pick on the roster.
So if you’ve learned anything from this column, it should be:
1. Changing the rules for the many to accommodate the few can be dangerous
2. Players play
I’m kidding with that, but don’t listen when people say the NFL rule needs to be changed and reference things like baseball, basketball, or hockey. Absent the physicality of football even, the system is set up in football to screw labor and help out management.
Just enjoy watching Fournette play this year and next year at LSU, and hope for his sake he doesn’t get injured.
Unless, of course, he is a hybrid being worked on since what do the conspiracy guys say … the 1950s? I’m not sure Roger Goodell and friends have a policy against them in the CBA, assuming Goodell has ever read the CBA.
I do, however, like the idea of a Martian taking Goodell to court just to see him get whipped by the other-worldly, since this world pretty much has covered it already.
And taking over the Milky Way be damned, if there’s anything worth outing yourself on that level for, it’s playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
