Ultra Natural Progression of Athletics

Last year I rambled on and on about Travis Rice and Brain Farm and how they were revolutionizing athletics with the Super Natural Contest. It was the first footprint to a brave new world in which sports blows past boundaries and controls and the status quo to create a revolutionary way of showcasing competition and urging on progression in sports which still have plenty of room to grow.

As a follow-up, I have to note that T Rice and crew have done it again with this year's Ultra Natural. The beauty about such sports as snowboarding and surfing is that they depend not only on the skill of the competitor but also on the blessings or curses of nature and in such highlight the added element of having to adapt to changing surroundings. Football used to have more of this before domes and warm weather stadiums and turf and global warming made it possible to nearly control nature and its effects on the players. But I've seen how surf competitions in shitty waves showcase true skill as the WCT elite boosted big airs and threw deep slashes on two-foot swell. As such, the Ultra Natural contest has shown the effects that changing snowpacks can have on one of the sickest man-made obstacle courses in action sports history. Leaving the controlled, groomed kickers and halfpipes behind and showing the best throwing down in virgin backcountry on a course known as "Scary Cherry".

For example, last year they had more snow and Travis Rice dominated throwing huge and technical airs into decent powder. This year, with Nelson BC's snowpack coming in at weak at best Rice didn't even - well you just gotta watch. And just like last year, you CAN watch.

Yup, the Ultra Natural will be big airing to your home on NBC tomorrow at 1:30 EST,  10:30 PST. Filmed with Brain Farm's signature mind-blowing technologies and techniques, it's a sporting event that even a non-snowboarder can't miss. Edited to take out the downtime, it promises to be all hammer and no filler. Want a preview? You got it.

So while you're sitting around, nursing that Friday hangover with a good spicy bloody, double vodka, click on the old boob tube and sit back for the best in the world throwing it down in the most innovative athletics competition on earth.

I guarantee it's better than watching the Women's Tennis Sony open and endlessly more fulfilling.

Here's to a life of adventure - happy Friday.

- Ryan

Sledneck King of the Hill

In some circles, the Mint 400 is a far far better thing than the Superbowl, the Kentucky Derby, and the lower Oakland roller derby finals all rolled into one. - HST, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

*

The uphill racetrack is that dirty zigzag under the lift

I've never been to the Mint 400. Hell the Mint Hotel isn't even around anymore, an atavistic shrine to Old Vegas torn down when the town went all Disney. But I can imagine what the scene was like - a hodge podge orgy of leather-wearing machine-loving honkies hooting and hollering as they defied nature and health to power crotch rockets across barren ungroomed terrain.

I can imagine it because if nothing else, no doubt Jackson Hole Hill Climb Weekend would go hand in hand with the Mint 400. Hell, I'd wager a few of the old-timers competed in the damn thing.

The 38th Annual World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb is organized by the Jackson Hole Snow Devils and a devilish course does the damn thing present. Slednecks from all over the country and the great north converge on the small town hill of Snow King to pilot their heavy sleds up to the top, at the finish piloting up 30 degree pitches and praying the damn thing doesn't somersault back on them. And for those who make it, the powers that be line them up to see who did it the fastest. Madness.

The madness began Thursday. I live 2 blocks from Snow King and slowly saw my street transformed to a haven for RV's and buses and pick-ups hauling heavy machinery and rowdy metalheads. I rode a lift up the hill just above the course as the first round of eliminations commenced including a straight uphill high-speed burn to just where it started getting precipitous, high-powered machinery racing uphill below my dangling board. Even without including the top super-steep I saw one guy's slep flip over just as he got to a cat track. As he went to right it, two more racers appeared, throttling it like a shotgun up the hill and it was only due to a last-minute swerve from the person in second place that the man whose machine flipped survived. Tommy or Joey or somebody won the race, a straight high-speed burn up to the top cat track. I played king of the hill as a young boy. It taught you conquest, speed, muscling. Taught a man the American way. So it was that I watched in amazement as these bastards played it on quarter-ton buzzing sleds. At 4 some garbled announcements were announced and the day 1 Pro Only Dash For Cash was finished. The Hill Climb had officially begun.

*

8 long years ago I was a young snowboarder punk freshly graduated from college, living over by the high school and the middle school and every morning as I waited for the bus to Teton Village I'd stare blankly at the cow pasture across the street.

In those days I rarely went to town except maybe to visit the Shady Lady or the Rancher or other bars of ill-repute. Most of my life was a series of laps between my home and the Village with the occasional trip to the pass to hit backcountry kickers. I was still blessed with the immortality of youth. I remember Hill Climb weekend as something that happened around me, satellite from me but it had no direct effect. Except, of course, that there was good cocaine in town, brought by 4-stroke animals looking to go up. It's no secret that the motor toys world loves its uppers. The Hell's Angels brought speed to San Francisco to end the summer of love and were the first mass distributors of meth in America. They were also the only gabachos the Mexicans trusted to spread their coke and meth in America, if only because they were as addicted to the sweet supply as they were fearless in the face of the law. No doubt had the nation been snowier there would have been an all-snowmobile gang of Hells' Angels who would prowl the high alpine on ancient sleds looking for drug-fueled snow cave orgies with their Mamas.

As such, my main memory of that Hill Climb is the streets buzzing with blue and red lights breaking up fights in front of all the Town Square hot spots, packed rowdy bars, and hanging out in the editing bay of a local ski video company firing down lines of pure white with co-workers.

"Here's a couple Steamboat moguls for you," the man had said, drawing out 4 perfect dinger mounds amidst thousands of dollars of editing equipment and I hoovered them down before going off into whatever mayhem I used to call nightlife back then, in the waning years of youth, when late nights didn't preclude early mornings. 

*

The only white powder I enjoy now piles deep on steep mountainsides and makes a man feel the closest to flying he can without contraptions or wing suits. 

But Hill Climb is a big deal and, living only 2 blocks away, it must be indulged. Such found my neighbor driving me to the Village to pick up some chocolates to twist the day and night around noon. Misty clouds hid the Grand and the Middle Teton with the South sticking out like the bow of some majestic granite ship. The chutes and gullys of the southside of Mt. Hunt stood enshrined by sunlight, the only white lines I craved any more, and JHMR was sun-bathed and alive and I pointed out to my neighbor Ship's Prow just off Rock Springs, where I'd ridden the day before. Then we were back home where I sluiced a stiff pour of whiskey into my coffee and my wife showed me how to properly use rolling papers.

Jared, a buddy of mine, not his real name, no real names here, arrived around 2 with a 30-pack of Coors Light, his cheery girlfriend in tow and as she and my wife set to discussing whatever it is women discuss he and I discussed free agency and the draft and lines I had yet to ride and climbs we had yet to attack, passing around a joint. The neighbor Joe came over with beers as Jared and I drank sidecars and sat on my stoop, staring at the top of the course where we could see people lined up as the whir of snowmobiles filled the air for miles around.

Then we were off to the event. Big loud machines and waving banners proclaiming Polaris and Klim and burly men in heavy black jackets is the only way to describe the scene we walked through on the border, where Cache passes the reinvention of 43 North as the new bougie bar and restaurant "Lift". A young boy covered up by sponsor gear and a big helmet roared down the melted street by us on his sled without regard for the treads of his machine. A large man with a heavy jacket like a king's fur supported by small legs waddled past. Trailers lined all adjacent streets and revelers were already drunk above us on the top of the bar so we dipped into a house on the corner. As Jared and his girlfriend discussed how they'd both partied at this house before in previous Jacksonian iterations I broke out half a chocolate bar. Jared and I split it clandestinely and circled around the entrance festival.

The festival itself is a tent village selling all imaginable motor-based paraphernalia amidst beer stands and autograph tables. I'd stared at a massive machine, a 4-wheeler dune buggy with triangle tracks replacing the back wheels and skis tucked under the front. 

The tent village taking up what had been the snowtubing park cost 15 bucks to enter so we walked around the block, beers tucked in our pockets, opened brews in our hands as we skirted police SUV's to the entrance to Snow King itself. Joe had told me the night before in the square it was chaos, packed streets and flashing cop lights. I'd read that they hired help from officers all over Wyoming to keep the peace. When gasoline and uppers-powered slednecks come together in the largest such rally violence and aggression and heavy boozing is undoubtedly to follow.

We walked through the lobby of the Town Hill and posted up at the picnic benches just above the Cougar Lift where we had a perfect view of the zig-zagging track to the top. As the chocolate kicked in I stared incredulous at the sleds flying up, over the lower kicker and into the higher section where angle defeats raw power and from there they have to finesse it up the last section to the top. 

Jared told me that in the big powder winters sometimes only 2 people will actually make over the crest but while watching we saw at least 4 push beyond and maybe more. It could only be surmised by the cheers from the lines of black figures up the hill whether somebody was successful. 

I nodded at the dry winter we'd had and stared at the tent village behind which Glory Bowl was just beginning to peak out of the high mountain snow clouds.

*

The Hill Climb is competition bordering on chaos. The whole thing was founded in 1975 by the Jackson Snow Devils. Back then it was just 20 good ol' boys high-lining up a steep ski hill for town bragging rights. Like all other great and weird things it grew from there. Now it draws over 10,000 fans and 300 snowmobile racers from all over the US and Canada.

*

The last great cheer erupted and we were greeted by the view of hundreds of black specks glissading down Snow King. It had wound down for the day, at least on the hill. That night there would be madness in all the town bars, cops handing out tickets and making arrests - over the weekend 38 people wound up in Teton County jail. One 19-year-old was taken to the hospital after passing out in the back of a cop car after an arrest for underage drinking. 

“I'd call it a typical hill climb weekend," said Lt. Cole Nethercott of the Jackson Police Department. Nethercott's agency accounted for 18 of the arrests, down slightly from last year's 19. The event typically results in a spike in the weekend jail population.(sourced from JH News & Guide). 

Most of the arrests were for DUI, though there was 1 domestic.

*

The excitement pushed us hard into our own drinking, back at the house, myself leading the charge. I also ate some more chocolate and quickly the day devolved into strobe lights. Visions of shots of fine Wyoming Whiskey. At one point we began building a bonfire cache with the goal of a grand bonfire later that evening in my yard but after our weak, drunken swings of the axe lost steam - because drunkenness should always be met by swinging and flinging axes - we abandoned the idea. A vision of punching my fence though I couldn't remember why. Then I was coming out of the black with THE BIG LEBOWSKI playing. The wife had put it on to return me to sanity. I'd lost my mind from all the ups and downs and sideways' mixing that I hadn't played with in a long while, chugging Evan Williams straight from the bottle in an angry bid to stave off the demons.

*

The next day greeted me with a swollen knuckle, a wicked hangover, a square crate 3/4 full of freshly-split wood, and a frozen mountain of Coors sitting on my front deck with a half-smoked cigar in its washy lake. Frost-brewed, tap the Tetons and so on. Jared and his girl had left around 9, I heard. Joe had gone to sneak into the music and snowmobile freestyle rally being held in the Rodeo Grounds behind our house. The whines of the final day of snowmachine races could be hear through the day and I watched from my front door to see if and who would summit.

Aside from all the debauchery and roughneck crowd, the Hill Climb World Championships is an athletic - athletic? - spectacle all men should experience at one point in his life. Or in fact BECAUSE of debauchery and the crowd, no doubt. It's another example of how we find more and more ways to expand the world of professional competition beyond the increasingly staid ball and field games that so dominated the last century of American competitive entertainment. And like the BANFF Mountain Film Festival or Travis Rice's SUPERNATURAL or the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom or the Sturgis Bike Rally,there's something to be said for ambitious endeavors that are firmly rooted in the simple act of a couple friends getting together to compete and showcase their lifestyles far outside the mainstream. Even more, in these particular examples there's an appreciation for the frontier, for men living far off the beaten paths who celebrate these lives in the high alpine, the last great American wide open filled with characters and sports and activities most of the low-landers and city-dweller will never be able to fathom.

Their histories are short and as such their grassroots natures and continual evolution make these events ones to watch. Football and baseball and soccer and hockey and all the traditional sports and conventions are still king, no doubt. But these new worlds and events are still in their infant stages, just like America in the grand scheme of nations is still in its toddlerhood. As such, you owe it to yourselves as Americans to partake in such small, growing events. Watching as they expand, partaking in the experiment before civilization jumps in and ruins it. In a way it's like how, looking back on our recent history, we can watch piles of steel and stone grow up into our great urban monoliths.

And all along, of course, remember to embrace the one thing that ties all of these grand experiments in competition and celebration and nation-building together - the age-old tradition of getting weird.

- Matt the Wanderer

Shit You Should Know: How to Travel Solo

Throughout my years working for an international organization, I have had the opportunity to travel extensively around the world. This minor perk, while not fully compensating for the lack of salary compensation,  does translate into enjoyment. I have been to Barcelona for several months, Rome for a weekend, traveled to New Orleans during Halloween, went to DC when my Orioles were in the MLB playoffs, and recently Puerto Rico and Miami for a work-related sporting event. I will write another article soon related to my epic month of traveling that recently passed but, in the meantime, wanted to continue our segment on how to do shit. While not necessarily as tangible as opening a coconut, fixing a surfboard, or how to tape an ankle, learning how to best optimize your trips when you are by yourself is important to anyone who travels for work.

This segment will revolve around the pleasantries of solo missions. While traveling with a partner is certainly more enjoyable as sharing the sights of a city with another enhances the experience, you can still have a good time. It can be rather enticing to live on your own schedule (When you’re not working), meandering aimlessly through the veins of a city, and taking in the visuals without being hindered.  

Make sure to walk- While my sense of direction used to be nonexistent, over the years of living in a city known for getting people lost my internal compass has strengthened which has given me the ability to maneuver through foreign locations. Sure, walking has the tendency to get boring if you don't have anyone to talk to but you also gain a greater intimacy with your location. By being a biped whose eyes are keen on your surroundings, you take in a location quicker and more thoroughly than when you're distracted by someone talking about all the shops they want to hit or the stunning beauties they want to (but don’t) hit on. 

 Financial Limits- Work trips usually entail a per diem for food and travel but ,beyond that, you need to make sure you save enough money to enjoy your surroundings, which range from amusements, local watering holes, museums, and exhibits. By sticking to your food per diem and walking everywhere, you're not wasting your money on transportation and food. Make sure you also have enough money for a stupid souvenir or two. It sounds corny but every time you look at that hat, bottle of booze, t-shirt, or shot glass you will be reminded of that glorious trip.

 

   

    

    

 

       

h    Occasionally splurge: I’m in my mid twenties in New York. My rent, alcohol, food, and drugs are too damn high. I am not financially capable of spending excessively throughout an entire trip and waiting to get reimbursed. With that said, you should go big at least one night. Each city has its own geographically-unique food and some restaurants that might be more expensive than you would like are meccas for such dishes. Enjoy when you can make it, but make it a rare occasion, especially when it burns way beyond that per diem. I tend to experience those delights once a trip pending on duration.

 Get Away- The resort life is not for me. Growing up in a household where our trips more closely resembled death marches for 16 hours in the rain sleet or snow, I’m not one to be cooped in a resort similar to thousands of others around the world. Sure, some of the amenities might be different, but when broken down to their most basic state, all resorts have nice restaurants, a place to swim (whether it be the beach or a pool or both), a plethora of themed restaurants ranging in price, caliber, and interest, and several places to partake in heavy drinking. While they try to infuse the local culture into these corporate shelters, it simply does not work.  You need to leave the comfort zone and explore your surroundings because that's when you truly get a feel of your location. You'll be able to do this as you don't have to drag someone along who simply wants to "lie on a beach and do nothing". There is a difference between being in Puerto Rico and experiencing Puerto Rico.

Research- Make sure you've utilized every outlet to gain the most knowledge on local foods, restaurants, local drinks, and beautiful vistas whether it be from books, online, friends, family, and, hell even porn as the occasional solid back-drop. If you go to a location by yourself without any knowledge of the destination,  you'll end up sitting around watching shoddy Spanish speakers cheating on each other or fighting each other or eating each other. You’ll have no fucking clue because you do not speak a goddamn lick of Spanish.

 Don’t fear the Dive: Let’s be honest, the most native places consist of dive bars or small, family owned restaurants off the beaten path. Away from the sights and sounds of gapers and the over-priced drinks and meals, small haunts are where the locals enjoy themselves without being packed in like sardines or hearing the same story of the same excursion from different people every goddamn night. The food also has the ability to outshine the tourist restaurants. While the larger 4 star dinners might be cooked by high end, culinary-schooled chefs, the local eateries have generations of local recipes made to perfection. Their lives have been immersed in the local flavors. Plus, if you plan on staying a few extra days on your own dime, you could always find a townie and take her down for the cost of a few cheap drinks, which will provide some shelter.

         Finally, and most important, get the Fuck out of your comfort zone: If the locals eat some sort of weirdly-cooked and oddly-shaped fish, eat it. If they drink some gasoline-infused beverage that contains enough alcohol to unclog your drain and heal cuts on your hands from the inside, knock it back. Just make sure you end up with all of your belongings. If it’s the home of bungee jumping, fling yourself off a mountain with that elastic cord. If you get bored but are not usually that outgoing, make friends. It’s actually a great time to learn new thing about yourself. Trips are suppose to get you out of your normal drudgery. If you had a long day of business meetings, rally yourself by getting a small cup of coffee, drinking an energy drink, or finishing that rail the concierge sold you. By being in another country where the people might not even speak your language, you are already experience something new, exciting, but also slightly weird. Take full advantage when you can because who the hell knows when you'll be back, and without someone trying to hold you to some level of continuity and normalcy, you're free to explore. Man up.

-Kyle

Amazing Discovery: Catholic means "Universal"

"I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" goes one of the lines in the apostles creed. People capitalize that Catholic, claim it means the reciter can only believe in the oldest Christian religion but, in fact, the Catholic there means universal. As in "everybody".

You wouldn't think that to look at the way the church has behaved of recent. With a Pope who bore a striking similarity to the Emperor from STAR WARS and made such asinine claims as AVATAR is evil because it encourages worship of nature while fighting tooth and nail to attempt any sort of reform of a church that is rapidly dying, the Catholic church looked to be little more than a relic of the past, like chastity belts and swords.

There was talk when Benedict, named no doubt after the rich egg meal, was promoted to pontiff following the beloved John Paul II that it was based on the idea that he would die soon while the Holy See could begin grooming a new ruler. Thing, the man didn't die. In fact, he continued on. A Hitler youth who saw the church's dropping numbers as an opportunity to thin the herd of the liberal, less orthodox Catholics, he was also adept at ignoring the rampant child molestation scandals eating away at the church in America.

I grew up Catholic. There have been phases in my life when I considered church service. Long stretches of months when I attended church weekly and often during the week. I prayed every night. When my family went to Rome we stayed with a dear friend in her convent with a breathtaking view of St. Peter's. We made sure to catch mass in Italian.

And yet over the last few years the church has seemed to do everything possible to alienate people like me from it - young, well-educated, liberal and yet firm in his beliefs in God. A church, like a nation, is meant to be a living organism, representative of its people with the added caveat that that representation is meant to paint a picture for a higher power.

As such, a church must evolve. The way I've always seen it, God is an artist - why else would artists be the most vaunted and celebrated citizens in our world? That is, you never see gossip magazines about bankers or paparazzi chasing oil men because such people are not as celebrated in spite of greater power and wealth. As such, if the bible is truly the word of God, it's to be interpreted as a work of art, not as a text book. And as art is constantly interpreted and reinterpreted to apply in different ways to different ages - anybody ever heard of a remake? - so must the bible be reinterpreted and, in some cases, be remade. That is, all the steadfast rules about what is right and wrong socially are out of date memories of an ignorant time past when women were just one step above chattel and men wiped their asses with their hands.

Years back, when they changed the mass from Latin to the languages prevalent in the place where the church was said, many thought it would destroy the church. It didn't. Over my lifetime they allowed girls to become altar servers. St. Peter's didn't crumble to the ground. But now it's time for a real overhaul and Pope Francis might just be the one to do it.

The first pope from the Americas, he's no doubt representative of the fact that more and more European gentry (translation: "Caucasians") have been leaving the church for its closed-mindedness. In Los Angeles my church gave as many masses in Spanish as in English - the Spanish masses were always full but during the English one I was often struck by the emptiness of the place, like a depressing high school play where the only people who turn out are a few parents, sheepishly checking their watches for when they can leave.

Pope Francis, while in Argentina as Cardinal Bergoglio, recommended the church possibly accept civil union for homosexuals, a HUGE step for a Christianity that still views homos as works of the devil. While a political move more than a moral one, it's still the first such step in the history of the religion.

In a church marked by excess and wealth, Pope Francis just took the chair of St. Peter's preaching more tenderness shown to the poor and more care given to the environment. And in general he has a track record of practicing what he preaches, prone to living humbly, riding the bus, spending his time far outside the European religious hegemony. Just look at his name - Francis the first. As in, over the 900 years since his death, no other pope has chosen to adopt the name of one of the most beloved saints because he's known for love of animals (just guessing here).

Of course the question is whether he can be the man who civilizes a church that for the past few years had been moving backwards. Whether he can at least bring it up to the 20th century (for the 21st is no doubt out of his reach.) Whether he will adapt to the times and allow priests to marry (in this modern era the sacrifice of family life is no longer tolerable among the clergy and no doubt is directly related to these sick men molesting little boys who they know won't tell that they have - urges.) Will he give women greater rights in the church as many groups of nuns have been fighting for? Will he encourage tolerance and acceptance in counter to the previous pontiff who preached closed-minded hatred disguised as religious integrity? In general, will he return to its original mission, being universally inclusive or will he preach more obstinate closed-mindedness and lead the church into ruin?

It's hard to say. And just like any political role, no doubt the power will have strong affects on the man from Argentina. But I do believe he will bring about some changes.

The last change that came down from the church caused me to leave the church. I have been trying to bring myself back into the fold but every time I think of the change I can't. The change wasn't a granting of rights; it wasn't as radical as the church accepting evolution. It was a few arbitrary lines being changed in the creed and some of the other responsorials. Not a change of meaning really; just a change of verbage. Like a company that's told it needs to change the way it does business so it tweaks the colors of its logo and updates the font from Script to Comic. It was a simple paintjob. And in this hideous act they took what I'd believed to be sacred and made it just another commodity, just another bullshit product packaged and shoved down our throats. I haven't been to church under my own volition since.

Somebody once told me you can't blame the church for the faults of its people. But if the people who run it claim to define it, then yes, I do blame the church. And whatever higher power may exist won't begrudge me that because if there is a God who hates gays, believes His followers should spend their lives alone, is against birth control in a world growing dangerously overpopulated, who believes women are lesser than men and thinks AVATAR was anything other than an enjoyable visual spectacle, I don't know if I want to worship Him. Because put like that, He kinda sounds like a jerk.

- Ryan

Player Mobility - Why NFL Teams Have Revolving Doors

Free Agency can be described as exciting, depressing, heart breaking, and intoxicating. In regards to the most interesting time for the NFL during the offseason, it easily surpasses the draft which, if you read my article related to this topic, could use some attention from the higher-ups who are instead focusing on implementing rules that will lead to the slow decay of the top sport in the US. With the most rigid cap in sports, superficial contracts still somehow emerge in which they're over-paying players, and then there are the cancer/ego players who move more often than Lindsay Lohan moves through rehabs. As a Ravens fan, I at first developed a skeptical stance towards what Ozzie Newsome, the GM, is currently doing; but when digging deeper into the recesses of his moves, they're downright smart. Sure, some GM’s make terrible decisions such as the Jets with Tebow, the Redskins with Haynesworth, and Derrick Dockery with the Bills, but being a GM with the constraints they are up against makes it the hardest office position in Sports. Well, maybe besides the commissioners who are generally loathed by teams, players, and fans alike. 

Salary Cap:

The NFL’s salary cap, based around a desire to maintain parity, is the leading cause for player movement. It’s hard to maintain a roster good enough to win the Super Bowl every year or keep a team stacked with Pro Bowlers due to the fluctuation of contracts, offers for them for more money on the market, and simply not having enough $ to keep everyone within the cap space. If there were no salary caps, the NFL would turn into the MLB, where big-market teams usually prevail. It’s rough when your team has a great year, then gets dismantled, but the sport wouldn’t continue to grow and develop without the cap.   

Superficial contracts:

By Superficial contracts, I don’t mean that they stare longingly at themselves, shun others who are not as attractive or good-looking like Kim Kardashian, or wear designer clothes just to grab a cup of coffee; but that number that everyone sees as $120 million dollars is rarely what a player is going to see. Sure sometimes incentives can surpass that number, but it’s really rare that that number is even reached. At most, a player will receive about 50% in guarantees, a base salary, and the rest coming from incentives. That means if a player is hindered by an injury, gets careered, or has a slump, that money will be gone faster than Carly Rae Jespen. Tom Brady looks like the most stand-up team-first player in all of sports after he restructured his contract, but he tripled his guarantee and was one of the few players who had a clause in his contract that barred any type of pay cut due to injury. If he gets careered next year, then the Patriots will be waist deep in wasted cap room. Welker on the other hand only receives 2 million more to leave a franchise where he became an A-lister and was the main receiver to become a number 2 guy in a new system. That $2 million after team fees, league dues, should not be enough to draw a player away from his life, but there were some issues with his contracts in the past which I’m sure was one of the reasons he high-tailed it out of there, and more importantly he has some solid/ more enticing incentives in place from Denver.

Essentially, there is more to a contract than that final amount. Sure, restructuring takes place as happened with Big Ben and Brady and surely Flacco since in his 3^rd season in this current contract he would be making potentially up to $28 million, but there are certain situations where a player does not have the ability to restructure because a team does not want to provide them with definite/attainable incentives and guarantees. That’s when a player walks.

Over-Paying Players:

Over the years, this has been a standard trend within the NFL, especially when their Q-rating is at an all-time high. Look at Albert Haynesworth; the cancerous and lazy player who, because of two pro bowls and all-pro seasons in 07 and 08, was awarded a $100 million contract by the Redskins. His size, speed, and football acumen were all outstanding, but to be paid that amount of money in a position that does not have the same impact as, say, a sack artist like a D-End, a versatile middle-linebacker, or a ball-hawking safety, at an age where the linemen start showing signs of pounding against refrigerators is asinine. The Ravens lost Paul Kruger and Dannell Ellerbe this year (Among others). After one hot-streak, Kruger was handed a 5 year $40 million dollar contract. In 2010, the man struggled to get playing time until he was moved to an outside linebacker in 2011. He still did not start, managed 6.5 sacks, and 15 tackles. This past season, he had 14.5 sacks and an extensive amount of tackles, but his sacks really appeared when Suggs returned. Kruger was relatively dormant when teams only had to scheme around him. He’s not worth top-tier linebacker money if he is not truly THE X-Factor. Danell Ellerbe had 1 break-out season and received a $35 million dollar deal with the Dolphins. He is injury prone and has been a head-case and just earned more money than the Ravens or most teams would/should pay for him. Both players, though, played in the national spotlight on the Super Bowl winning team, which is why they are being overpaid. 

Cancers:

It’s hard to see beyond the veil, but there are players that cause dissension within the locker rooms. We are not, as mere spectators, privy to all of the details and events that transpire, but look at some of the players whose performances did not justify their release. Terrell Owens (4 teams), Randy Moss (5 teams), Haynesworth (4 teams), Vince Young (3 teams- OK, so he only had 1 decent season anyway), Adam “Pacman” Jones (3 teams), Chad Johnson/Ocho-Cinco (3 Teams) and Brett Favre (4 teams). This year, it seems like there are some issues with Ravens' Safety Bernard Pollard as he's an absolute wrecking machine, hard worker, but will be likely being playing for his 4^th team in his 7 year span as the Ravens decided to release him. There are obviously some issues before Baltimore, as a player of his caliber is worth more than $2.735 million for two-years, which the Ravens paid him. Egos can create issues within a locker room as well, just ask Revis and his island. Revis right now seems to be wanting a new contract every year, which is why there's a discussion of wanting to trade him. Because of said discussions, it seems he wants out even more now due to feelings of disrespect.

It is amazing to see the transformations from year to year. The NFL is a business and in order to maintain greatness or, in business terms, a "profit", GM’s and owners need to make tough decisions. I’m sure an organization hurts even more than the fans do when losing an asset, but it makes no sense to over-pay or keep a good player around if his personality can overshadow his abilities. Players, on the other hand, need to do what’s best for them in a job where injury is prevalent, stability is difficult, and most careers are short. It’s a difficult time for us fans, sure, but there is plenty of time before the start of a season. Teams can still fill gaps and get better by Fall.

-Kyle