NFL Rookie Salaries Must Be Revamped—Here's How

Arbitrating Can Be Fun

Once all of that is established, we can get to what could really make all of this work.

Right after each season, each player enters arbitration and gets a raise according to his worth. If he does not merit one, he gets the league-minimum raise of, say, 10 percent. If his contract isn't guaranteed, he can be cut; if it is, it will be cheap to buy him out and cut the losses, with the player able to find a new suitor while still earning a signing bonus and five years of NFL salary.

This process will more or less mirror Major League Baseball's, but it will have to be accelerated due to the nature of the game. Newly drafted football players contribute much sooner and are much more liable to suffer career-threatening injuries than baseball players. Therefore, the arbitration process begins immediately.

After the season, each rookie will be arbitrated and given a new contract based on how much players of similar experience and production have made in the past (giant contracts that caused this problem notwithstanding). Likewise, this will be done for all second-year players (drafted after this rule-change took place), and so on.

The experience factor in arbitrating is key, as this will work much like baseball's, in that the players still won't be making what they'd make on the open market.

Players will not be eligible to enter free agency until they have played in the league for five years (a compromise could be four years, if necessary). So, each year, they will enter arbitration to earn in salary what they earned on the field, and all of their peers will receive the same treatment.

To clarify, "guaranteed" here would mean the player is guaranteed to be awarded a new contract of some kind, even with poor performance, for each year of the rights agreement.

Hold the Holding Out, Please

Now, this might all sound well and good, but we know two things that can get in the way. That baseball players in this similar system often work out big contracts with their teams to avoid arbitration years, and that NFL players are notorious for holding out until they get what they want.

So here's my final provision that ensures players will have to earn the serious contracts.

Teams cannot sign players to long-term deals until after the third year of owning their rights. Contracts must be year-to-year, with the team simply owning the rights to the player for the first five years of his time in the league.

If a player does hold out after his third year, looking for a long-term extension the team doesn't agree on, the current fines would apply. With most of his peers relying on arbitration during this time, it should become easier to compare x player to y player and avoid unreasonable demands.

With these conditions, players and agents have little way of holding any leverage over their teams. Players will take what they earned by getting themselves drafted wherever they were drafted, and have all the incentive in the world to be the best they can be in their first three years.

Teams won't have to work out long-term contracts after three years since they'll have one or two more years worth of rights, depending on the labor agreement, but big deals will most likely be done for the players who stand out.

And it may cause more players to stand out, as it will be less likely for a player to rest on his laurels, necessitating more effort in those crucial early years. Other players will still earn what they deserve under the arbitration system and won't be too far from reaching full-on free agency.

In theory, this should provide a solid framework for a fair system. The minor points of the blueprint here can certainly be adjusted, especially when it comes to signing bonuses and which rounds merit guaranteed contracts. (Maybe the third- and fourth-rounders can only get three guaranteed years, but still have their rights owned by the team that drafts them for the full four or five years.)

Regardless of how it happens, I'd like to see something like this happen. It would be good for all teams, all veteran free agents, and all fans when it comes to worrying about rookie holdouts or rookie contracts limiting their favorite team's wiggle room under the cap. And, who knows, fewer "bust" contracts might help keep ticket prices down, too.

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