previous column	deadlyhippos home	next column

From Faithful Friend to Ferocious Foe
06/19/06
by Clay

NFL fans have all become general managers with their own salary cap calculators. Whether in a bar or an online sports message board, fans debate the relative merits of player salaries with a degree of knowledge that would have been stunning five years ago. Fans wield statistics, comparative pay data and age production analysis with a precision Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would admire.

In years past, the departure of a Brett Favre would have been greeted with a public gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Now, even though Favre has returned, polls of Green Bay Packers fans revealed a majority who hoped to bid adieu to the man who made green and gold cool to a new generation of fans. Players are fond of trotting out the, "It’s a business" cliché whenever they are cut, hold out for more money or seek to justify their contract demands. Now even casual fans realize sports is a business, too. In times past, most fans didn’t spend much time analyzing the relative nuances of salary squabbles and the miasma of guaranteed money contracts. That’s changed. We are all general managers now.

Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair became the latest iconic salary cap casualty last week. The relative silence in Nashville over his departure was only echoed of late by the previous years’ silence over Eddie George's exodus. While the protracted nature of these hold outs might explain some of the acceptance, to a much greater extent, the silence was motivated by an understanding of complex math. Fan consensus held that McNair was not worth $23 million and that Eddie George did not merit a multi-year contract extension.

After trading McNair to the Baltimore Ravens, the Titans announced their goals for all the money they saved: Signing new draft picks and potentially pursuing a veteran free agent. Parting used to be such sweet sorrow -- now it’s all about sweetening the salary cap. Today's young fans have embraced the NFL's duality with considerable aplomb; they root for a particular team while at the same time rooting for individual players on their fantasy football teams. The union between player and team has been torn asunder. How many fans have jerseys of former players silently moldering in their closets? After all, every fan is ultimately a mercenary and each player a hired gun. Welcome to the 21st century NFL, where if you wait long enough, every fan favorite becomes a foe.

I was at the Music City Miracle and for the past nine years, I watched Steve McNair start for the Tennessee Titans. I cursed him, praised him, derided him and argued he was the greatest quarterback of his generation. But I always rooted for him. True fandom rarely follows a straight course. I remembered when McNair would climb up from the turf with a belabored tenacity suggesting we've just witnessed the final play of his career. Then mere moments later, he would run outside with huge defenders diving at his feet. He would scramble so far and so fast the first-down marker wouldn’t even be visible behind him. It was almost as if McNair knew from the very beginning of his career that his steps were numbered and he needed to conserve his energy as best he could. As fans, we all felt the same way.

So now McNair is the 421st presumed starting quarterback of the past decade for the Baltimore Ravens. The hated Ravens now employ the formerly beloved Titans trio of McNair, Samari Rolle and Derrick Mason. But McNair is the one who stings the most. The man who, amid the burgeoning growth of Nashville, has stood as the sports figure that united us all. As buildings climbed into the sky all around us, roads and bridges sprang up with alarming alacrity, newly arrived northerners embraced "ya’ll" with stunning frequency, come Sunday, Steve McNair was going to be under center.

Now that’s no longer the case. In time to come, a new player will once again assume his stance on top of the sports pedestal. But it’s still a shame McNair couldn’t have stayed to finish his career here.

Criticizing the NFL as a fan is almost impossible. The league has done so much the right way during the past two decades that anything short of full praise seems almost blasphemous. But the mercenary nature of the league, which ensures parity, also brings its own ultimate irony: Teams are forced to burn bridges with the players who helped define their club and city. Put simply, what if each team had the option to designate a single, multi-year veteran the salary cap could not touch?

If each fan continues to view their team through the prism of an NFL general manager, the fun of fandom, which is illogical in its most basic sense, is held hostage by the cold logic of economics. Ultimately, it’s pretty hard to quantify the value of keeping today’s fan favorite from becoming tomorrow’s foe.

_______________________________________

Discuss this and any other column deadlyhippos.com column at our message board.