contracts salary caps why do our favorite teams make some of the moves they do it's usually

the money it's time for the business of sports with andrew brand hey welcome back to another

addition of the business of sports with andrew brand i wanted to sort of catch you up on some

things do a brant's rants haven't done one of these for a while.

Maybe a little bit instructional, kind of a football 101 on rookie contracts to start it out.

And then some thoughts on the NFL rules changes, what's going on there with the May meetings,

thoughts on Mark Cuban's comments about tanking and maybe even a thought on Kaepernick,

kind of the topic,

not only last season, but in the offseason as well. So just Brant's Rance here on the Business of Sports Podcasts for this week in May. One thing I wanted to talk about is rookie contracts. Boy,

it's a sea change from when I did rookie contracts as a negotiator for the Packers.

And then in many years before that, as an agent, I probably have negotiated, I don't know, 100, 120 rookie contracts over my career.

And these were back in the day when you could negotiate, where agents could make a difference in terms of money where typically agents would wait until right

around training camp to get the deals done. I banged my head against the wall. Every May

and June went up with the Packers trying to get guys to sign up, you know, but agents just want

to wait. They don't want to look bad. The deal could come in early. They could be the first

in the round. It wouldn't look good when deals came in around them. So most teams just kind of wait. They call training camp. They

call the agents get the deals done then when it's all filled in and you just plug in a number.

But that was rookie contracts back in the day. Since 2011, a sea change. The CBA, as we all know by now, took a haircut to rookie compensation,

really took the money down for first rounders, really made all draft picks signed four-year deals,

so there's no chance of getting to free agency before that with a restricted free agent if you're a drafted player.

It also didn't allow any

renegotiation until three years in the league. But what it did to the negotiation part of it was say,

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