After the Chargers’ season-opening loss to the Dallas Cowboys, a defeat sealed when San Diego was stoned four times from inside the Dallas 10-yard line in the closing seconds, Marty Schottenheimer was asked if the result would have been different if Antonio Gates had been on the field.
The coach wouldn’t entertain the question, or the ramifications of the Chargers’ decision to suspend the Pro Bowl tight end for the game after he reported late to training camp amid a contract dispute. “Antonio wasn’t available to us,” Schottenheimer told reporters in San Diego. “His absence was a nonfactor.”
The business of football seems to be a growing factor in the game of football.
Gates, who set an NFL record for tight ends last season with 13 touchdown receptions – 12 inside the red zone – presumably will become a major factor on the field when he returns for this afternoon’s showdown against the Broncos.
Similar aspirations are being harbored in Chicago, where Bears fans are hoping rookie running back Cedric Benson will contribute more than the 10 yards he gained in a 9-7 loss to Washington.
Benson, the No. 4 pick in the spring’s draft, made his professional regular-season debut after a 36-day holdout.
It may be coincidence that the teams involved in the most-publicized contretemps of the offseason – hello again, Terrell Owens – lost in Week 1. Perhaps by the end of the season, Benson will have the rookie of the year award and Schottenheimer will try to give the ball to LaDainian Tomlinson at least once in a similar situation.
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But rest assured that between now and then, there will be plenty of drama from players and management over contracts, grievances that serve only to point out the NFL is a far cry from the game your kids play in the parking lot or on the playground.
“It’s not really football,” Indianapolis Colts running back Edgerrin James said of the intrusion of business into sport.
“We love to play, and it does a lot for us and for our families, but it’s one of those things where you have to deal with it – deal with it or get out of it.”
Looking out for No. 1
While fans may feel Gates’ decision to seek a better deal cost the Chargers a game, or feel betrayed Owens would create turmoil in the locker room of the defending NFC champions, other players say being in the NFL isn’t a case of playing for God and country, like the Olympics. Before you play for the masses every Sunday, they say, you have to first take care of off-the- field issues.
“I think people sometimes get the team and being a team player, and dealing with contracts and the business confused,” Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest said. “When you’re doing your contract, that’s your individual business. It has nothing to do with team.”
If that seems almost sacrilegious, consider that most players have little, if any choice at all about their financial security. The average NFL career lasts just 3.2 years. And, with NFL contracts not guaranteed like those in the NBA, players can be cut at any time, leaving anyone, even stars such as Owens and James, feeling relatively helpless with regard to their long- term fate.
“It’s not like there are a lot of things you can do; it’s a one-way street and (management’s) got all the control,” James said. “You have to look at it and say, ‘OK, out of the few options I do have, this is the one that’s best.”‘
Surprisingly, management isn’t completely opposed to the idea of players looking out for No. 1 – to an extent.
“I completely understand the other side – whether or not you agree with it is another thing,” Broncos general manager Ted Sundquist said. “For a lot of these guys, especially as they approach their first free-agent contract, it does become a business and they do think of it from a business standpoint.
“The career of an NFL player is short-lived, and the opportunity – especially for those players who can garner a big contract – can vault them way past their playing days. Ultimately, the goal from my office is to get them signed to contracts and get them on the team. They’re no good to us if they’re not on the field. A holdout is a bad situation on either side.”
Good moves
In the current salary cap era, no one is immune from the business side of the sport. Because they’ve come away with the Vince Lombardi Trophy in three of the past four seasons, the New England Patriots have taken on an almost mythical status. That legend has grown, in part, because of the “sacrifices” a number of players have made at contract time.
However, McGinest said, whatever a player chooses to do is indeed a personal choice, one governed – just as it happens in Cleveland or Arizona – by what’s best for him.
Joe Andruzzi left the Pats before this season to go to the lowly Browns, just as fellow offensive lineman Damien Woody took his two Super Bowl rings to Detroit in 2004.
“It’s a business, that’s what happens,” McGinest said. “Our team isn’t about making sacrifices to play here; guys make decisions for them and their families. You have guys who have been in the league for a long time, made money and done X, Y and Z, and they want to be on a good team, they want a chance to win. That’s a good business move. Then there are guys who have been on a good team, have won Super Bowls – if they have a chance to go somewhere else and make more money or do other things, that’s a business opportunity for them.”
Similarly, the Patriots’ front office in recent years made the decision not to retain star defensive backs Lawyer Milloy and Ty Law, saying the benefits from keeping the duo weren’t worth the cost.
“From the outside looking in, especially when you’re sitting on top of the mountain three out of the last four years, (it looks like) you can’t do anything wrong,” Sundquist said of New England. “But they go through the same problems we all do.”
Reeling from deals
The Colts know these issues as well as anyone. For years the team forsook defense, largely because after taking care of their offensive stars, there wasn’t any money left.
In the spring of 2004, Indianapolis agreed to a seven-year, $98 million contract with quarterback Peyton Manning; in December, wide receiver Marvin Harrison signed a seven-year, $67 million extension. Another wideout familiar to Broncos fans, Reggie Wayne, is in the last year of his deal with the team.
A little more than two weeks ago, though, Indianapolis found the money to sign defensive tackle Corey Simon to a five-year pact after he was released by the Eagles in – of course – a contract dispute.
All of which may leave James out of luck. In the last year of his deal, James is scheduled to make just more than $8 million this season as the Colts’ franchise player. If a new deal isn’t struck in the next six months, he could become an unrestricted free agent.
The Colts’ first preseason game this year was in Japan against Atlanta. At the start of training camp, expressing unhappiness about his situation, James said he would skip the trip, adding the closest he was going to come to the Orient was “going to Benihana’s restaurant.”
However, under pressure from team officials, James relented, conceding, “I didn’t have many options.”
That is a situation he says he’s resigned to for as long as he has to be.
“(But) someday,” he said, “I’m going to stack all mine and when I leave, I’m gone.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
