Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to our humble abode, the Thunderdom, on this franchise tag Tuesday, March 3rd, 2006.

This program begins now.

Sports!

Our fantastic, and today football is obviously going to be a huge piece of the conversation because franchises all around the NFL are deciding whether or not to utilize the franchise tag or the transition tag on a player that they don't want to see hit the market.

Now, the franchise tag not necessarily be loved by the player's perspective. I once was a franchise tag player.

You know, my contract came up and there was a new general manager in town who did not

necessarily respect my Twitter account, although I think we think now at this point, probably

should have. He certainly did not. We did not get along at the time. We did not see eye to eye.

He was not there when I was drafted. He had no loyalty to me. So in return, if we all know

how I operate now and how everything is gone, I'll let him know that there's no loyalty to me. So in return, if we all know how I operate now and

how everything is gone, I'll let him know that there's no loyalty between us. Jim Ursey had to step in and say, hey, McFee's not going anywhere. Boom, franchise tag the next day. All of a sudden, I'm told by a lot of other players that I should not be happy. But what I saw was $2.1 million dollars being guaranteed to me to kick a football over the next 12 months. I was pumped to sign

that thing, signed that thing, headed straight. What I saw was $2.1 million being guaranteed to me to kick a football over the next 12 months.

I was pumped to sign that thing.

Sign that thing headed straight to Niagara Falls with Nick Marado and his little brother.

And we had an absolute blast up there in Canada.

Back when Canada was good to me.

That's right.

Those were good times up there.

And the old casino, the new casino, the Frankenstein over the Burger King, let alone Boston Pizza. And then there's a place up there. You get a looney or tunie down there. The sun will set, but the sun also goes down. I mean, I had a blast up there in Niagara Falls as a teenager, and that was my first trip I went up there. And I started talking around to people like, hey, why aren't we signing?

I'm a millionaire to kick footballs. What are we, we're not happy about? Well, obviously, if you get hurt this year, then obviously your future production and every other position, other than kicker and punter, the franchise tag is a lot of money. But it's certainly not the amount of money that whoever is getting franchise tag is worth. So today you've got a day where players getting guaranteed some money.

Teams are restricting free agency for people. And hopefully a long-term deal will be struck. We shall see. But guys will be pissed whenever they are getting guaranteed this amount of money, because in return, what they're looking for is a long-term stability and investment from the franchise in me the person. This call goes down 4 p.m. Eastern Time. So about three hours in 57 minutes or so, teams will have a decision to be made. Breece Hall, congratulations. You've been franchise tech. Once again, he's not going to be happy about this. No. Okay, so these players are not necessarily thrilled about any of this. Well, it's a lot of guaranteed money. It's like, well, the reason why they're getting it is because the team doesn't want to see them go somewhere

else because the money they're actually going to get is about to be absurd. The average of the top three, I believe, at your particular position, without all the bonuses, just average salary, without all the bonuses is normally how they make up the franchise tag number. So then you obviously have differentiators there between what the market is and what you are.

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