| 15 October 2009
Sports teams are businesses and the players are the employees of the businesses. I don't think a lot of fans and media get that on an everyday basis though. Just yesterday we got news that Brady Quinn has put up his house near Cleveland up for sale; he said he wanted to be closer and it's too big, while we know that he wants out of Cleveland. The problem with the fans and media though is that immediately we want to make him be the bad guy. We immediately start calling him a baby or say he's just being a bitch, when the fact of the matter is that his career depends on what he's doing now. Nobody wants to be second fiddle at their place of employment and if you are replaced then why would you want to stay. The Cleveland Browns is where careers go to die so I don't blame Brady for trying to get out of there. How many quarterbacks have prospered in Cleveland in the last 20 years? If you are at your job and you get demoted and then could have a chance to better yourself at a better company wouldn't you want to take it? The problem with everyone looking into a player's situation is that we can't differentiate the business side of things and the fact that they are getting paid multi-millions to play a game. The fact of the matter is that if we put ourselves in the same situation we'd probably feel slighted and have some of the same reactions as well.
The two biggest scenarios where unhappy players played out was in the off-season with Denver. We saw Jay Cutler getting pretty upset that his new coach tried to trade him and we saw Brandon Marshall act like a fool because he didn't get a new contract extension. Now there's always better ways to handle almost any situation, and people make mistakes, but after looking back at these players I think what they were trying to achieve is what they both deserved. The real question is do the ends justify the means? Were their antics and public perception worth getting what they wanted? Take a look at Cutler and put his scenario into a normal person's life. You are the operations manager at a company and have done a solid job the past two years. Most everyone in the company thinks you are doing a great job and you are helping to improve the company. Suddenly there is a change in ownership and because of this the new owner wants to get rid of you in favor of someone he has a personal relationship with. I would be very upset and I don't blame Cutler at all. The last thing you would want to do is to work for someone like that and by him requesting a trade he rectified the situation for both parties and they both have created positives out of negatives from it.
I just think we need to take a look at the whole scenario before we start condemning a player for requesting a trade or wanting a new contract. Just because they make millions of dollars doesn't mean they don't want the same satisfaction of being appreciated or promoted like anyone else does in the workplace. So let's look at the whole picture before we start complaining about players complaining, because they have a much more legitimate case to bitch then we do.
