RedRamage

I totally agree. A floor is obviously one way to force them to do this, but I'm unsure of other ways to encourage it. Any bright ideas? (Not that MLB really cares about us discussing it in a sports forum... at least now that Dumbrowski isn't a member of the Tigers organization.)

I think it's also a bad sign that Belichick's coaching tree is pretty much non-existent. By itself this isn't evidence that he was or wasn't a bad coach, but I think it does add some weight to the claim that Belichick is over-rated. It obviously isn't a HC's job to train new HCs, so this a small bit of evidence. But It seems like a guy who is touted by some as a Generational HC would have at least some of that knowledge rub off on his assistants.

If they setup a cap/floor, I think there's actually a pretty good way to do this. It's actually and idea I had many years ago with the NFL, and it's pretty simple: For every consecutive year that a player is with a team, 5% of their AAV is not charges against the team's Salary Cap. For a very simplistic example: The Tigers sign a player to a 5 year, 10,000,000 contract. It doesn't matter how much is paid each year, the average is $2M per year, so that players contract would normally charge $2M against the cap. Therefore: In 2026 the cap hit for this player is $2M In 2027 the cap hit is $1.9M ($2M - 5% for one year) In 2028 the cap hit is $1.8M ($2M - 10% for two years) In 2029 the cap hit is $1.7M In 2030 the cap hit is $1.6M Now in 2031 that player is a free agent and the Yankees come in and offer him a 1 year deal for $3M. That would cost the Yanks $3M against their cap for that year. But the Tigers could look at that and counter with $3.5M know that this would only hit $2.625M towards their cap. The percentage off could be adjust to see what makes the most sense of course. And also, of course, this only works in a cap/floor situation where teams have at least similar resources to spend enough towards the caps.

RE: Write off for signing players: While I like the idea of incentivizing teams signing their players long term, I don't see that this change the math much, except for the big boy teams. In some ways it only helps the big teams stay big. If you're a small team that isn't interested in spending big money, this does nothing for you. You're not going to spend big anyway, so who cares? If you're a middle of the road team, you're probably not butting up too much on the luxury tax, so there isn't a huge benefit here. You might have 1 to 4 teams that could look at this and say: "Yeah, we want to sign player X to a contract, but that puts us over the cap, so we're not going too because can't afford the contract AND paying the tax." If you're a big market team, now there's more incentive to sign your players long term, sure... but that just gives you more money under the tax so you have even more funds to spend on other FA. This plan doesn't provide funding for small market teams and it also doesn't provide incentive (or force) those teams to spend more. It does help Big market teams lower their tax burden. RE: Trading "cap space" for players/picks: This at least gives some resources to smaller market teams, but I fear it will only be a smallish help. It might allow the Rays (in the example provided) get more talent into their club, but it isn't going to provide them the revenue to retain those players, especially as we've given the big markets yet another way to avoid tax payments, which means they have more funds to spend on FA again. TL;DR: It's an interesting approach I guess and might help in a few specific areas, but I fear it also exacerbates the existing issue of Big Market out spending the small markets while the small markets have no incentive to actually try to gets better or spend more on their roster.

I don't disagree. But if the argument is that Belichick is a generational HC, why is his record so poor when he doesn't have Brady as his starting QB? If the argument is that Belichick made Brady much better than Brady would have been with anyone else why wasn't he able to elevate any of the other QBs he had? Let's compare Belichick to Reid a moment. I think Reid also benefits from having Mahomes as a QB. Like Belichick, Reid never won a SB before he got Mahomes as his QB. But, unlike Belichick, Reid had substantial success outside of his time as Mahomes' HC. From 2000-2009 in Philly he made the playoffs every year but two, getting to the SB once. This was with McNabb as his QB. From 2013-2017 in KC he only missed the playoffs once with Smith as his QB. Reid has won 11 post season games without Mahomes. Again, this isn't a totally fair comparison because no one is going to say that Vinny Testaverde is the equivalent of McNabb. So Reid had better QBs to work with than Belichick. Now, as much as I do love beating a dead horse, I'll state again that I don't think Belichick should be considered a bad coach nor do I think he shouldn't be in the HOF. I just think his rep as the Greatest HC of this Generation is skewed by him having the greatest QB of... maybe ever?

I would agree that he belongs in the HOF. While I think there is plenty of evidence that Belichick would not have had the success that he did without Brady, he still did have the success and it's impossible to prove how much of that was or wasn't Brady... or how much of Brady's success was or wasn't Belichick. Plus, even if we say that Brady was the major driving force, Belichick was still the coach and GM who was acquiring the talent to put around Brady and making sure it all worked harmoniously. As you say: Ultimately the results are what matters and no coach has more SB rings than him. He belongs in the hall even if I might want to argue that he shouldn't be lauded as much as he is.

Yeah, maybe he could have. But I don't think we're talking about Belichick as the "Greatest Coach of this Generation" if he hadn't lined up with Brady.

He quite possibly should get some credit for Brady. How much will be eternally debatable of course. Did Belichick find the perfect way to use Brady's talent? Did he discover the perfect way to unlock his mental state to so Brady could really understand the NFL game? Would Brady has been nothing more than a Journeyman QB in the NFL without Belichick? It's certainly possible that we could answer all of those with a yes. But, what we don't see is Belichick doing this with any other QB. We see Brady take over for an injured Bledsoe and go on an amazing run that continued for decades and two years after Brady left NE. From the other side we see: '91 Browns QB Kosar has a "meh" season. '92 Browns QB Tomczak has a "meh" season. '93-'95 Browns QB Testaverde has three "meh" seasons. (Testaverde would have two pro-Bowl seasons after leaving Cleveland, so had at least some skills.) '00 Pats QB Bledsoe has a "meh" season. Bledsoe has three previous pro-Bowl seasons before Belichick was hired in NE and one pro-Bowl season after Bledsoe left NE, so again... at least some level of talent. '08 Pats QB Cassel had a good season. '20 Pats QB Newton had a bad season (tail end of Newton's career, so not unexpected) '21-'23 Pats QB Jones has one good season followed by two bad. So what does this tell us? Again, it's very hard to say how much of this was Belichick wasn't a good coach and how much was the QBs in question weren't good QBs. What I think we can glean from this is that with the exception of one year of Mac Jones and one year of Cassel, Belichick was unable to get any other QB to perform anywhere near the level of Brady. So even if we want to credit Belichick with unlocking Brady's greatness it's clear that Belichick could only do this with one QB. Maybe Belichick stumbled on the perfect way to mold Brady, but if he did he's been unable to replicate that trick with any of the other QBs he's worked with.

Quite possibly, yeah. But would he be considered a HOF coach if he had a good run in New England with a couple of SB victories? Would many people be calling it a snub if that coach wasn't voted in on the first ballot? Would people be calling that coach the best coach of this generation? Again, I don't want to say that w/o Brady Belichick would be nothing. I was already a HC before Brady with two different teams, so he obviously has some level of talent. You don't get two shots as a HC without knowing your stuff. You also have to factor in that his first 4 years as a HC was in Cleveland, which would be like being a Lions HC pre-Campbell. So I'm not arguing that Belichick would have been utter trash without Brady. Rather, I'm arguing that Belichick would probably have been just another NFL HC. Some success, some failure, eventually retires, maybe becomes a talking head on a major network. I think Belichick is more like a Bill Cowher type of coach and less like a George Halas.

I still think that Brady made Belichick. I've always maintained that football is the most inter-connected of team sports. A good secondary makes a DL look better, a good defense makes the offense look better, etc. etc. etc. So it's not perfectly fair to really just pull out the QB and say change differences are purely because the QB is now gone. Having said that... I'm going to do just that. But I'm acknowledging up front that there will be other factors and we can't say Brady vs. no Brady is the ONLY reason. Still, given the huge difference here I think it's okay to say it was a big reason. Belichick w/o Brady: 83-104, 1 playoff win Belichick w Brady: 249-75, multiple super bowls

I remain skeptical. I feel like with the big business that the NFL is today that there isn't the room for racism that they may be have been in the 80s or 90s. Teams want to win and I don't think there's the need for interviews to "discover" candidates. I mean look at Blough, for example. He's a guy with very little coaching experience and yet multiple teams were interested in him for an OC position. How did they know about him if he never interviewed for an OC job before? I dunno. I by NO MEANS trying to say that minorities don't face discrimination nor am I saying that there isn't some level of racism in the NFL. IT's also easy as a white guy to sit back and say the Rooney Rule doesn't really do anything. I just feel if I was a minority coach who got interviews part of me would always wonder if they seriously wanted to interview me or if I was just helping them check a box. Still maybe if I really WAS a minority my outlook would be different.

That's a very valid point and I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss that he never faced any discrimination just because I didn't think he was bi-racial.

I dunno... I will say that I do think they've improved the rule in applying to to coordinators and to requiring it be out of team individuals. It's better than when it seemed like Dennis Green was getting interviewed for every HC job out there without ever being a serious candidate. But I still think the rule is flawed. Maybe it's better to have a flawed rule than no rule, but I can imagine there are more situations like what we say with the Giants in 2022. You interview a candidate, who's white... you're blown away and you want to hire him, but you haven't interviewed any minorities yet. You can't officially hire him, but you also don't want to let him go and get hired by someone else, so you essentially tell him the job is his, then you interview minorities with no intention of hiring them. I wonder if it's possible to have some sort of "waiting period" where no new hires can be made? There's potential issues there too, but maybe it solves more problems than it creates? Honestly I much prefer the reward system where teams get draft benefits for developing minority coaches and executives, vs. the punishment system where teams are required to check a box to avoid fines.

Which honestly just shows how silly the Rooney Rule is. Look, I totally get that discrimination happens. Especially 20-30 years ago when it was very much an "old boys" network and owners weren't very "progressive." I applaud the NFL for trying to address it, I just think the Rooney Rule is a poor attempt to do it. Seriously, would anyone look at this guy and say: Yeah, I totally think people would reject him for being black.

Pretty sure the theme is that all the candidates are human, which honestly is pretty limiting. When you consider there are billions more creates on earth than just humans Campbell is really limiting his options by only considering humans.

Is Tee Martin just a Rooney Rule check box interview?

Hmm... that's a valid point. I'm trying to find a way to not penalize teams for creating huge contracts under the old system, but you're right. The other option might be to allow teams to go over the salary cap for a period of time with ever-increasing penalties. For example (just pulling number out of thin air for demonstration), year one if you're over you pay a luxury tax of 10% on every dollar over the cap. Year 2 you pay 20%, year 3 you pay 30%, etc. Maybe combine this with an overtly large window for Cap and Floor but that closes the gap faster? I dunno... As much as I'm in favor of a salary cap/floor situation, I also don't want to be draconian in applying it so that it unfairly punishes teams which were operating properly under the rules as they existed. In the end this is just wishful thinking I'm afraid. Any Cap/Floor system is going to require the majority of the owners onboard AND the players as well. Plus it will almost certainly require opening the books, at least to the players union. I don't see any of those three things as likely.

This would definitely be an issue, but, at least in my opinion, a rough few years of figuring out how to get to a better system is not a reason to abandon the better system... that assumes the new system is better of course. And my idea to handle this would be to make the band huge to start with, then year-by-year close the gap. Let's say your numbers are right and the cap would be 202 and floor 181.5 for 2026 if the implemented it right away. So, instead of that let's set the cap at 352 and the floor at 101.5 for 2026. In 2027 the cap goes to 342 and the floor to 111.5. In 2028 the cap goes to 332 and the floor to 121.5... and so on. This gradual approach would allow for teams with super bloated salaries to have time to get some of the major contracts off the books and allow smaller market teams to ramp up their spending rather than just needing to add 40 or 50% of the payroll so throwing it at undeserving players just to meet the floor.

Not so fast... Now hopefully this doesn't happen, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if the Tigers go back if things solidify for Fan Duel. I pointed out earlier that the big issue with MLB doing the broadcast is that teams get a percentage of money brought in by subscribers rather than a set sum. A set sum is going to be more attractive to most owners... especially if your an owner who might not be fielding a fantastic team.

... that MLB owners don't want you to know!

Right, I worded that wrong. What I should have said was: "IF they are minimal I could live with them as it helps pay the bills." But as you said they aren't, and they are pervasive and they do downgrade the experience. Look at the uniform ads, for example. Especially for the Tigers the Meijer logo is very minimal. It doesn't stand out at all. It doesn't (at least for me) effect the quality of the game, so... have at it. Bring in some more money that hopefully gets spent on the team. (Yeah, I'm probably giving Ilitch too much credit there.)

No, I do not. I'm well aware of my less than stellar will-power when it comes to things that can become addicting quickly, so I don't even occasionally bet.

I mean, I guess it pays the bills and if the on-screen notifications are minimal I guess I can accept them... but I mostly agree with you that not having them at all would be best.

I found this part interesting: Main Street and other traditional RSNs promise teams a fixed amount per season for their TV rights, typically tens of millions for most teams. Teams carried by MLB, however, are not promised a fixed fee by the league. Instead, MLB pays them whatever their telecasts wind up bringing in, via streaming subscriptions and traditional TV distribution fees. So based on this a small market team still get small market media money from MLB. It's an interesting dynamic because there's no danger of MLB "missing payments" to teams because it's not a lump sum, it's a percentage of what MLB gets. It also incentivizes teams to have a better product because that would result in better subscriptions and more money. However that uncertainty means teams might be much more reluctant to commit big to a roster if there's not guarantee they'll get x-amount of dollars in media money. I think it also fails to recognize that big market teams will get big market media money. I still think some level of pooling of media money is necessary to balance the league.

Yeah, I'm rooting for a tie.