Opinion
Reflexively, I disagree with Kane Cornes. I understand that he is trying to be an Aussie Skip Bayless so people disagreeing is kind of the business model, but I am a sucker for getting annoyed with stuff that doesn’t matter.
As an aside, do you know what makes Skip Bayless so good at trolling? When people go back at him, which they often do, Skip either shuts up and never acknowledges it or he eventually has them on his show.
Think about when Terrell Owens went onto Undisputed after Skip had spent years calling TO “Team Obliterator”. What did Skip do?
Looked at him and said, “I can see the numbers Team Obliterator, but I don’t think you’re a Hall of Famer”. Skip is the worst, but credit to him for that moment. Kane is too thin-skinned to do anything like that.
He’ll probably quote tweet this article despite the fact that I have like 50 followers and say some boring Andrew Tate, fringe Christian right meninism thing back to me.
Nobody has ever more obviously name searched himself (except George Kambosos).
But, despite my better judgment, he recently asked in his weekly column for The Age whether AFL players’ salaries should be public. He answered in the affirmative.
I think I agree.
Kane’s reasoning is that it would be better to release player salaries basically because we guess about it anyway so what’s the harm in telling us. Beyond that, he says it’s expensive to go to the footy and we know what the Prime Minister makes, as well as key people in public companies so why shouldn’t we know what footballers make?
Kane Cornes should go to the false equivalence Olympics. He would get on the podium right next to Nikki Haley and Andrew Bolt.
Even if his reasoning is nonsensical and his article reads like it was written by a year 11 whose best case scenario is a B+ in English (he and Wayne Carey must have the same ghost writer), the overall point is I think right.
I actually think that it should go beyond just knowing what players make because, while that is interesting, it is not the whole story. The whole contract should be public, from the signing/option bonuses, to a general understanding of the incentives and how the wages are scaled.
There are two reasons.
First, I think that it would benefit the players. Obviously, it would be extremely awkward for people in your life to know exactly what you make for a living. Especially if your first contract has you making more annually than your parents have ever made (though that would be pretty rare for the almost entirely privately educated AFL).
However, the benefits to the player outweighs that awkwardness and right to privacy.
A public salary can be used as a bargaining chip. Think back to The Last Dance, where a key point of the series was how underpaid Scottie Pippen was. The publicity around that in the late 90s was extraordinary and ultimately made Pippen a sympathetic figure, especially because we knew exactly what he was making. Then he got a fat new deal from Portland.
Look more recently at the contentious negotiations between the Baltimore Ravens and Lamar Jackson. A big chip for Lamar was that everyone knew the equation, and everyone knew that he should not play for the tag that the Ravens slapped on him.
He was able to draw public support because the public understood the restrictiveness of the transition tag, and the low-price tag associated with it.
He eventually got his big deal after the Ravens came to their senses and caved to public pressure, eventually signing a $260m with $135m guaranteed at signing.
Beyond these micro examples, a better understanding of specifically what players make might actually help the players at the CBA bargaining table. Another CBA should come soon (it was due at the end of last year), and players are currently pushing for 32.5% of league revenue, according to Tom Browne.
Browne calls this an “ambitious position” (it’s not) and would result in the league having to “reduce spending somewhere” (how about exec bonuses?).
Jai Newcombe of the Hawks is tackled by Patrick Dangerfield of the Cats. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Browne’s daddy is the President of Collingwood. No prizes for guessing where he gets his information, or his talking points.
AFL players are in a car crash week after week and subject themselves to physical trauma constantly, just to get ready to play. They are well compensated but generally need to work after playing with the way that pay is currently structured.
I genuinely believe that if we, the public, knew exactly what the absolute best players make we would be surprised at how relatively little it is. The league’s middle class has expanded, but in an extremely profitable sporting entity for which the value of the broadcast has and will continue to rocket, the best players and biggest value drivers have not been adequately compensated.
The highest paid player today makes basically the same as what Wayne Carey made in the 90s.
Beyond the above, there are very few roles in life where more is public than that of a professional athlete. We already know their age, height, weight and medical history. That can’t really be said for anyone else in the work force.
Publicising salaries would not be a gargantuan step from there and could have real positive effects for the players as a bargaining chip both in micro contract negotiations and more generally in their negotiations with the league office.
Obviously, this can easily go the other way. We could very well have some Joe Johnson style vilification after his big deal, but the benefits would outweigh the cost for the player.
Beyond that, it would help to inform the discussion around the game.
One of the most interesting aspects of AFL football to me is team building. Footy is such a random, difficult to predict game and very seldom does it hinge on one player. Because of that, discussions about team building are among the most interesting that can be had.
It is interesting to ask where can you find the little edges that define winning losing, before a ball is bounced?
However not knowing how resources within the cap are allocated and how the contracts work affects the ability to have a quality discussion around this issue.
Consider the NFL. In the 2011 NFL CBA they brought in a rookie wage scale. This was basically to avoid situations like the 2008 draft where Jake Long, the number one pick, signed a deal that made him the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL at the time ($57.5m over 5 years) before he had even played a down.
The team that had the first pick was in possession of a poisoned chalice whereby they had to both use extremely valuable draft capital and allocate that player a significant chunk of their cap.
To combat this, the NFL brought in a rookie wage scale which prescribed exactly how much each player was making based on where they were drafted, and how long their contract would last for.
Do you want to know how much Buddy earns? (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
So first round picks have four-year deals with a team option on the fifth year, second round picks get four-year deals and so on.
As a result, I can tell you that Bryce Young, the first overall pick in the most recent draft, will make $37.95m fully guaranteed with a $24.6m signing bonus and will count for $6.9m against the cap in 2023.
That backdrop is extremely valuable for understanding how the Panthers can build their team and enables the media to talk intelligently about the best ways to go about it.
For instance, we know that the best way to win is to have a QB on a rookie deal because they are cost controlled for at least five years if the team wants, so we understand how they allocate resources. It makes sense, for instance, to splash cash in the early years of a QB’s deal given there is money to burn while the quarterback is cheap.
We also know that it makes sense for teams to trade up into the first round if a player that they like is falling and they expect that it would be a good value proposition to give up draft value for the benefit of having access to the fifth year of team control.
The way that the NFL talks about their contracts and how to build teams is professorial because of how much we know about the players contracts and how much of the cap is allocated to a given player.
We can understand how the best teams allocate resources and where you can skimp on price, and which players are most valuable based on the value of their production versus the value of their contract.
The way we talk about team building in the AFL is necessarily vague. We have no idea how the cap works, and even if we did know we wouldn’t be able to apply it because we don’t know what anyone makes.
Therefore, we don’t know with precision just how much a successful team has allocated to different positions, what is successful resource allocation and where you get caught making poor decisions.
We don’t really know much of anything. We’re just guessing.
In short, it helps everyone to publicise player salaries and might even make the conversation around the game smarter.
Something that the game desperately needs. Otherwise, we’re just going to keep learning the wrong lessons from the American sports media landscape.
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