Experience or Potential: Do NFL Teams Get What They Pay For?

Matthew Stafford, first-round selection of the Detroit Lions, hit the biggest payday of his life when he agreed to $25 million of guaranteed money to possibly be the team's next starter. 

Such a contract only added fuel to the fire of the debate raging among owners, managers, players, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell: Why are the rookies making that kind of money?

Of course, at the base of this issue are the agents and general managers that have convinced each other that the first few picks of the draft will always be Peyton Mannings rather than Ki Jana Carters.

These massive deals give talk radio, ESPN, and others the fodder to argue that players in their prime are short-changed, like the teams that pick in the first five picks because they have to cripple themselves to pay these rates.

What the NFL (and to some degree, the Player's Association, via tacit agreement) would like to do is set a rookie salary cap which would pin back the salaries, hopefully making all sides rethink the role of the so-called "can't-miss" player.

The NHL already has something similar in place. Since the first real collective bargaining agreement in 1994, a rookie salary cap was put in place which limits how much a player gets on his first contract, usually three years, to around $1 million. This rule has allowed the teams to spend on the older players, so average salaries for various players at various ages have gone up.

As it ends up, the biggest salaries outside those of the one percent of players who are so good they defy age grouping, go to the older players. Most often the players getting paid around the maximum are almost aways older, established, and even aged players around the age of 30 and up.

This has led many in the NHL circles to question why players who are effectively past their prime are getting big wages just for what they used to be. Often these big pay-outs to the elder statesmen have been as big of busts as the ones given to the younger guys.

So the question remains which option is better: the experience or the potential?

Ideally, your players in their primes should be making the most. but often this is not the case in either league. Often what matters is not what is now, but what is future or past glory.

So while one could and should argue that their should be a rookie wage scale in the NFL, would it come at the cost of having old relatively useless veterans who clog up cap space instead? Or is it the truth in all sports that bad management can wreck a team, be the roster old or young?

Let the debate continue.