Whining about Free Agency in Atlanta

Two articles from the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitutions) lamented the parity and "mediocrity" of the league caused by the salary cap and free agency rules. Such rules, they assert, let mediocre teams like Carolina reach the Super Bowl.

I post both articles for your distaste, and the email of each writer.

First, "NFL whiners get what they wanted" by Terence Moore. Mr. Moore can be reached at [email protected] .

Is the NFL happy now? During the rise of dynasties, from Green Bay to Dallas to Pittsburgh to San Francisco, whiners were everywhere. They treated their perception of evil like that tired line involving the weather: Everybody complains, but nobody does anything about it.

Finally, those whiners have gotten their wish. They've forced the NFL to turn its playoffs into Forrest Gump's box of chocolates when it comes to predicting the winner of games.

You can't. Courtesy of those whiners, the league has made it possible for the obscure Carolina Panthers to reach the Super Bowl this season against a New England bunch that features only a couple of guys that you've sort of heard of.

Then again, since the Patriots are going for their second world championship in three years, maybe their roster is familiar to more than just a smattering west of the Charles River.

So much for fantasy. I mean, Tom Brady? Despite Peyton Manning's aversion to big games, he could spend the upcoming Super Bowl week in Houston exciting the masses better than Brady. For one, Manning used his arm to ignite one of the most explosive offenses ever. For another, Manning is a Manning, and Brady is just a Brady.

We're back to Gump's box of chocolates, which suggests: Parity doesn't care whether you're a Manning or a Brady. As a result, Brady's Patriots whipped Manning's Indianapolis Colts during the AFC Championship game. Parity is here, and parity isn't going anywhere, whether we like it or not.

We don't like it. We prefer the glory days of the Packers, the Cowboys, the Steelers and the 49ers, with guys named Hornung, Dorsett, Bradshaw and Rice instead of Minter, Jenkins, Bruschi and Centers. All you need to know is that, soon after the opening kickoff for this Super Bowl, the Panthers' starting quarterback will be Jake Delhomme.

Jake Delhomme? When it comes to fame, he's not exactly Joe Montana or even Tom Brady. But none of that matters to the whiners. With much help from the late Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner who was parity's best friend, it's possible to have even the Falcons fly out of nowhere to the Super Bowl before becoming the Falcons again.

Speaking of the Falcons, since they did the impossible during that 1998 season, you've had the Tennessee Titans leap from five non-winning seasons in row to the Super Bowl. You've had the Baltimore Ravens snatch a world championship with defense, defense and Trent Dilfer (translated: absolutely no offense). You've had that first group of no-name Patriots leave the shadows to shock the big-name St. Louis Rams.

Then came last season, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stopped their habit of teasing in the playoffs to flatten the creaky Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl. As for this season, the Buccaneers and the Raiders were among eight of last season's 12 playoff teams to miss the playoffs this time. And, yes, they all were victimized by parity as much as by unlucky breaks and sloppy play.

You can blame parity on free agency and the salary cap. That duo in recent years has kept rosters in constant flux. That duo also has zapped the powerful and inspired the pitiful. With parity, you don't need a bunch of stars anymore to become significant. With parity, you can have either one star or a few key moves to rise from oblivion in a hurry.

For instance: With parity, the splendid Donovan McNabb led the otherwise shaky Philadelphia Eagles to their third straight NFC championship game. And, with parity, the Panthers used acquisitions in the draft and through free agency to sprint from 1-15 two years ago to the Super Bowl.

That's right. Parity is a wonderful thing, but only if you're into mediocrity.

 

Here's the second article

For more sideways swipes at the Panthers, here's "Free Agency Affecting Super Bowl" by Jeff Schultz. He can be reached at [email protected] .

The most hyped sports week of the year officially begins this evening and I'm going to go out on a limb here: Although the Super Bowl is expected to be viewed by 800 million people in 220 countries, I'm going to assume there is not one kid running around his backyard in Papua New Guinea, yelling, "Mommy, mommy look at me! I'm Jake Delhomme!"

As the NFL's marquee value for quarterbacks go, Tom Brady makes Jake Delhomme look like Johnny Unitas. But compared to Unitas and Montana and Staubach and Bradshaw and Aikman and Starr and Elway, Brady is several blocks off-Broadway.

Jake Delhomme and Tom Brady are two-named quarterbacks.

The Super Bowl used to be reserved for one-name quarterbacks. The Super Bowl was Montana and Dawson and Namath (one bottle, one microphone and one libido has slightly altered his one-name status).

This year, the Super Bowl is not Manning vs. McNabb or McNair vs. Favre or Gucci vs. Yves St. Laurent.

The single biggest event in professional sports is now Corn Flakes vs. Oatmeal.

Steve Young, a former Bright Lights, Big City quarterback himself who won a Super Bowl in San Francisco, has seen this coming. He would prefer to see it going.

"Free agency has eaten away at offenses," said Young. "So every year you have to throw a team together. Because of the salary cap, teams have to choose which side of the ball to spend their money on and they're saying, 'OK, lets throw all of our bullets into the defense.' The coaching is going through the defense.

"We had two dominant offenses in the playoffs, Indianapolis and Kansas City. You can't get any better than those two, and look what happened to them. The teams that have good offenses, their defenses aren't up to snuff. New England is about the only one making a case that it can get it done on both sides of the ball."

The intent is not to diminish the play of Brady and Delhomme. Brady and Delhomme don't mess things up. Brady and Delhomme win. Brady and Delhomme are here. That puts them ahead of, like, 90 other quarterbacks in the league.

"Don't knock Jake, he's played great," Young said. "The degree of difficulty of what he's doing is as high as what everyone else has done."

But this is the NFL playoffs. This is the Super Bowl. This is a week of corporate parties and $600 face-value game tickets and advertisers falling over each other to spend $70,000 per commercial second. (Is that considered a value buy in Papua New Guinea?) When we get to this week, we are used to seeing high-performance vehicles, not well-functioning mini-vans.

But we need to get use to it. This is an NFL trend that may not turn around any time soon. Last year it was Brad Johnson vs. Rich Gannon. The year before, it was Brady vs. Kurt Warner (who was Delhomme before Delhomme). Before, Trent Dilfer vs. Kerry Collins. Until recently, the fraternity of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks has been like a gold-dipped parade, with only occasional obscurities (Jeff Hostetler, Doug Williams).

The NFL remains the pre-eminent sports league. It ranks ahead of baseball, hockey and basketball in all vital areas: TV contracts, ratings, collective bargaining, ticket sales, merchandising, global fan appeal. Publicly, you are not going to hear any whining from league or network executives that this is like some grand stage production missing its leading actor. But stars generally drive even the ultimate team sport.

Young again: "To me, there's an over-arching issue. The NFL is the best sports league in the world but it's subtly being eroded by free agency. Until you have guys staying together on one team for longer periods, this is going to continue. I know we're never going to get back to the way it used to be, but the league and the union need to look at this and make strides."

When asked how, Young said something that will get him into trouble with his former union brothers: "Put a bottleneck in free agency," he said.

Then he backed off.

"I know, the union will say, 'Steve, free agency is the reason our salaries are up.' So I guess I need to think about this some more."

Super Bowl I was Len Dawson vs. Bart Starr.

Super Bowl Lite will be Jake Delhomme vs. Tom Brady.

Somebody has been messing with the galaxy.

 

My take when I first read these articles was that these guys have such hard-ons for Vick and want so bad to see a "dynasty" built around their hero. Both of them have treated Carolina with contempt in their articles throughout the season.

 

another case of sore losers whining about why their team sucks..

next article..

 

Throughout the season? More like since the Panthers were born.

 

A ton of folks are probably still hatin it that the Panthers went 12-4 and made it to the NFC Championship game that second season. That is probably when everyone (but us Panther fans) really started hating parity.

 

Oh my god those nasty hicks are celebrating championship teams while we here in the civilized areas of the country are forced to endure their crudities.
Somebody must've lost big in Vegas.

 

ill say it again

FUCK ATLANTA

 

I'm a Braves fan (20 plus years, not a bandwagoner) and have read many of their baseball columns. Schultz is an idiot and Terrence Moore is too. Moore is also a racist (or reverse racist, to be PC). I laugh at anything they have to say. It will be fun beating the Falcants next year.
________
ford explorer history

 

Atlanta always has been, always will be....SCUM!!!