Posted on 09/05/2015 10:22:54 AM PDT by BenLurkin
For more than 700 football players this is the cruelest of weekends; told they’re not good enough. Or, at least not worth, what teams were paying them.
They will awaken Saturday unemployed, or packing suitcases for alternative postal codes, as teams trim rosters to the 53-man limit.
Among the surprise exits is Darnell Dockett, signed away from Arizona six months ago by San Francisco, but deemed unworthy of his $7.5-million contract Friday. The more familiar names waived were Dolphins’ quarterback Josh Freeman, who didn’t help his cause with two interceptions Thursday. Rex Grossman was let go by Atlanta. Steve Weatherford’s decade with the Giants came to an unhappy end, and Matt Barkley is odd-man out in Philadelphia.
(Excerpt) Read more at torontosun.com ...
They cut Tebow.
Never understood why pro football doesn’t have the equivalent of the NBAs
‘s D league or MLB’s AAA, other than the NFL owner’s greed by not wanting to delete their fan base. mLB has more teams at both the big league level and AAA, and doesn’t seem the have that issue. If the NFL have a Junior Circuit they could hold some players to get experience at pro levels and still make additional revenue.
Can Texas pickupTebow as there third string ?
It’s all money. Football is the most expensive sport to play and semi pro teams don’t last long. They only lasted a few seasons at best.
The de facto junior circuit is the CFL and maybe below that the Arena League.
Plus the violent nature of football means that it’s more likely a player is going to be so injured that they’ll never be able to get to the level needed to make it to the NFL. It’s not like baseball or even basketball in that respect, the depreciation of a player in football over time is pretty drastic. The average career of an NFL running back is about four years.
And there are half a dozen threads about that.
I knew a guy from a job the early 90’s that had been on the Oakland Raiders team. He was cut prior to getting the big money. He got a nice car out of it... The job he was doing was working at a printing company on the night shift. He was hoping to work at some school as a coach.
Missed that million dollars by not much.
This Texan would love to see that happen.
Maybe New England can pick up Tebow. I know they had him before but maybe they take him again.
They do. The Arena league and the CFL. Not to mention of course the ultimate feeder system the NCAA. The NFL gets all the benefits of a junior circuit without paying for it.
Running a football league is expensive. With the college divisions there is no market for it. And summer football just doesn’t seem right.
And maybe the Jaguars can win the SB.
There are a lot of so called Smaller markets I bet would love the have a second tier pro team. And who says it has to be in a different part of the year? AAA baseball plays at same time as the big leagues. I hear a lot of excuses, but none good.
The one good reason-—there are already “semi pro” football leagues all over the place. There is the NEFL which has/had about eight teams from around New England. Its made up of older former high school and college players. They run from 19 to 35 years old.
They go to the games. Their wives and girlfriends go. And thats about it.
Pretty good football. But not exactly enough to fund much of a crowd.
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