You think this would shake up the Draft!?

[Silverfox]

Originally Posted by sportscurmudgeon

For reasons that have never made a lot of sense to me, the NFLPA has vehemently opposed a rookie pay scale. Here is why I do not understand their position.

Every team in the NFL has a salary cap AND a salary floor. Every team has to spend more than X million dollars and less than Y million dollars on player salaries every year. If rookie wagers are "reined in", the salary money "saved there" has to go to other players who are not rookies. And "not rookies" are the players who are the current menbers of the NFLPA.

So, the NFLPA position seems to favor showering money on college kids who are not Association members at the time of the draft at the expense of putting that money in the pockets of current members of the Association.

I don't get it. But the reason there is no rookie wage scale is that the NFLPA - - and Gene Upshaw very specifically - - fought it tooth and nail.

This is right on. The real question is why is the NFLPA so insistent on this position? If the answer is to maintain a free market then the teams have no one to blame but themselves. Setting a "rookie scale" (can you see the agents buying this?) would relieve a lot of pressure from the veterans - and there wouldn't be anything wrong with renegotiating after a year.