Author Archives: drewjgallagher

About drewjgallagher

Freshman at Bowling Green State University. Majoring in Sport Management with a minor in General Business. Interested in writing about almost any sport, specifically baseball and football.

Why was Melvin Gordon’s Holdout so Different from Le’Veon Bell’s?

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By Drew Gallagher

October 7, 2019

Drew Gallagher is a second-year Sport Management student with a minor in General Business at Bowling Green State University. Drew is a proud native of Aurora, Illinois and is interested in many sports, but focuses primarily on baseball and football at the professional and collegiate levels.

On Wednesday, September 25th, Melvin Gordon of the Los Angeles Chargers decided to end his hold out and returned to his team. His hold out for a better contract began in training camp and lasted until week 4 of the NFL season (Gordon, 2019). In the middle of the holdout in early August, “Melvin Gordon’s agent Damarius Bilbo [had] requested that the Los Angeles Chargers trade his client” (Abdeldaiem, 2019, para 1). The holdout included its share of ups and downs, but still seemed relatively quiet. This is especially apparent when put side-by-side with Le’Veon Bell’s 2018 holdout which lasted the entire season.

As a reminder, Le’Veon Bell was a member of the Steelers who was also in the last year of his contract. He decided in training camp that he wanted to hold out for a long-term deal with his current team. Both his camp and the Steelers had many separate contract negotiations throughout the preseason and early 2018 season, but no new deal came about. Because of this, he ended up foregoing the entire amount of the franchise tender that the Steelers had offered him, and he sat out the entire season. Gordon however, has had very similar circumstances, but still gave in to his holdout not even a fourth of the way through the year. One of these similarities is that both teams seemed to get by equally fine with their backup running backs (Ekeler and Conner) who thrived without their first string counterparts. This begs the question: how did the differences between the two affect the outcomes of their respective holdouts?

For starters, media coverage seemed to play a big role in how people perceived both incidents. Le’Veon Bell is known to be a very outspoken individual. He was constantly doing interviews and posting on social media to talk about his displeasure with how his holdout was going. Because of this, I believe that the media had a lot more interest in the story. Gordon, on the other hand, seemed to stay relatively quiet during his holdout and therefore had less coverage coming his way. This could very well be part of the reason why Gordon decided to come out of his holdout part way through the year unlike Bell. Without the constant media coverage, fans weren’t as eager to see the deal get done. This meant that Gordon had significantly less leverage than Bell when it came to contract negotiations.

Another reason that could be equally responsible for the difference in the holdouts is that If Gordon didn’t “play at all in 2019, his contract would… just transfer to 2020, when he would then be scheduled to earn $5.6 million once again” (Graziano, 2019, para. 5). However, Bell did not “have this problem because of the franchise-tag rules, which would have forced the Steelers to pay him nearly $21 million this year if they had wanted to franchise him for the third year in a row” (Graziano, 2019, para 6).

Whether the contracts themselves had the largest impact on the differences between how the respective holdouts ended up could definitely be debated. What is clear though is that the difference in media coverage definitely affected them in some way. I can definitely see similar circumstances affecting future holdouts as well.

 

References

Abdeldaiem, A. (2019, August 1). Melvin Gordon’s agent requests trade amid contract dispute with Chargers. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/08/01/melvin-gordon-trade-request-chargers-contract-dispute

Gordon, G. (2019, September 25). Melvin Gordon ending holdout, will report to Chargers. nfl.com. Retrieved from http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001058986/article/melvin-gordon-ending-holdout-will-report-to-chargers

Graziano, D. (2019, August 8). Why you can’t compare the Ezekiel Elliott and Melvin Gordon holdouts to Le’Veon Bell’s. ESPN. Retrieved from https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27342231/why-compare-ezekiel-elliott-melvin-gordon-holdouts-leveon-bells

What Does Harper Deal Mean for MLB and Other Leagues?

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By Drew Gallagher

March 18, 2019

Drew Gallagher is a first-year undergraduate student at Bowling Green State University. He is planning to major in Sport Management with a minor in General Business. Drew is a proud native of Aurora, Illinois and is interested in many sports, but focuses primarily on baseball and football at the professional and collegiate levels.

Back on February 28th, the most lucrative free agent contract in North American sports history was agreed upon by Bryce Harper and the Philadelphia Phillies. The deal ended up being worth $330 million over 13 years (Zolecki, 2019). The contract also included stipulations such as no-trade and no opt-out clauses for the 26 year-old outfielder (Zolecki, 2019, para. 5). Now, of course, this is an insane amount of money for any one individual to be making, especially since it is 100% guaranteed.

When you examine the deal individually, you can see that it benefits everyone involved. As Kram (2019) said, “Harper receives the largest contract by total value in U.S. sports history, while the Phillies can spread the payment over more years to reduce the per-year cost” (para. 1). When you examine the deal on the larger scale though, you see that it may be a sign of what’s to come for Major League Baseball. We can predict that deals, at least for star players, will start to become more and more about long-term security in the coming years. This is especially important when you think about the number of young talented players in the game right now who will all become free agents at some point within the next decade.

Many news outlets took this news another route though. Since the NFL is the most popular league in the country, why shouldn’t its players earn as much or more money than MLB players? There are many forms of this argument that we hear frequently since the NFL is infamous for limiting guaranteed money for its players. At the surface, this argument makes complete sense. The players that earn their league more money deserve to be compensated more for their play. But when you look at it from a business standpoint, it becomes apparent why that isn’t the case.

According to Cosentino (2017), “NFL players are far more likely to sustain injuries than those in MLB… the mean number of injuries suffered per game in the NFL is approximately 4.9 times higher than the sum of those other leagues [the MLB, NBA and NHL]” (para. 5). The truth is, such a high risk of injury leads teams to be more reluctant to dole out big money to players. The same can’t be said for baseball since it is rarer that a player suffers a major injury. Baseball is a more long-standing sport with a more influential players union. These two reasons set it apart from the other two major American sports.

It is my guess that the implication of Harper’s contract will extend primarily to MLB as a whole. It does make sense though that media outlets would try to apply it to other sports to make it a more universal topic for their viewers. The truth of the matter is that the sports world is very secular and not much of what happens in one sport will affect another.

References

Cosentino, D. (2017, August 1). Why only the NFL doesn’t guarantee contracts. Deadspin. Retrieved from https://deadspin.com/why-only-the-nfl-doesnt-guarantee-contracts-1797020799

Kram, Z. (2019, February 28). The ripple effect of Bryce Harper’s record-setting Phillies contract. The Ringer. Retrieved from https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2019/2/28/18245294/bryce-harper-philadelphia-phillies-giants-dodgers-yankees-cubs-trout-betts

Zolecki, T. (2019, February 28). Harper, Phils agree to 13-year deal. mlb.com. Retrieved from https://www.mlb.com/news/bryce-harper-deal-with-phillies

Talks of Change Immediate in Wake of Zion Injury

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By Drew Gallagher

February 23, 2019

Drew Gallagher is a first-year undergraduate student at Bowling Green State University. He is planning to major in Sport Management with a minor in General Business. Drew is a proud native of Aurora, Illinois and is interested in many sports, but focuses primarily on baseball and football at the professional and collegiate levels.

On Wednesday, February 20th, the greatest rivalry in college basketball resumed and there was a lot of promotion put into the game. Less than a half-minute into it though, all that excitement was changed to dread for most Duke and NBA fans. As you probably already know, Duke star Zion Williamson suffered a knee injury that could have very well ended his season and maybe even his seemingly locked position as the number one overall pick in the upcoming draft. Being that Williamson is arguably the most hyped basketball prospect since LeBron James, you can imagine the thoughts going through everyone from basketball fans to NBA executives’ heads after it happened. Luckily for Zion, the injury is now “being labeled as a mild knee sprain” (Walton, 2019, para 3).

If you’re like me – constantly watching sports talk shows and reading sports articles – you noticed a common theme the day after the injury. Analysts seemed to flip-flop between the implications of the injury for Duke and a potential rule change by the NBA. This would include the eligible age to declare for the NBA draft changing back to 18. This would eliminate the “one-and-done” rule given that prospects could declare directly out of high school. The rationale of most analysts was mainly about a player possibly losing out on money if they sustain a career ending/hurting injury in college when it could have been avoided by being in the NBA already.

This talk was of course to be expected after a player of Zion’s ability had a possible career ending injury. It felt like the national media was just waiting for something like this to happen so that they could criticize the NBA for making players go to school for just one year. I find it interesting that they would wait like that because if it was truly as urgent as they all claimed it to be on Thursday, then it would’ve been just as urgent before the injury ever occurred. And yet, talk about a possible rule change only happened occasionally before. Granted, one may argue that since Williamson is as good as he is, the injury finally woke these people up and cemented the idea in their minds.

The media’s continual coverage helped lead the NBA to propose lowering the eligible draft age only a day later. This would be the first step towards changing the rule back to what it once was in the early 2000s. According to Goldberg, “the timing is reportedly coincidental” coming the day after the injury (Goldberg, para 3). I do find it very hard to believe that the injury just happened to occur the day before they planned to report this. The NBA would need to most likely wait to change this rule for good until the new CBA is agreed upon sometime within the next five years.

I do find it very interesting that this sort of talk has been reserved to the basketball ranks and has yet to make it into college football yet. This is surprising when you think about the risk of injury being much more prevalent in the sport of football than basketball. I did hear the occasional discussion about it when Nick Bosa decided to sit out for the rest of his season at Ohio State after an injury, but this talk was nothing compared to the media storm caused by Williamson’s injury.

It was apparent to any sports fan this week that Williamson’s injury caused a huge stir within the sporting community. We will see if the national media keeps arguing for the case of a rule change in the coming months leading up to the draft. My guess is that this talk will not cool down much until then.

 

References

Goldberg, R. (2019, February 21). NBA proposes lowering eligible draft age to 18 after Zion Williamson knee injury. Bleacher Report. Retrieved from https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2821830-nba-proposes-lowering-eligible-draft-age-to-18-after-zion-williamson-knee-injury

Walton, M. (2019, February 21). Zion Williamson injury updated to Grade 1 right knee sprain. NBC Sports Chicago. Retrieved from https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/bulls/zion-williamson-injury-updated-grade-1-right-knee-sprain

Maryland Football Coach DJ Durkin Fired Day After Reinstatement

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Drew Gallagher is a first-year undergraduate student at Bowling Green State University. He is planning to major in Sport Management with a minor in General Business. Drew is a proud native of Aurora, Illinois and is interested in many sports, but focuses primarily on baseball and football at the professional and collegiate levels.

DJ Durkin, the head football coach at the University of Maryland, was fired from his job Wednesday after being reinstated just a day before by the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents (Dotson & Almasy, 2018).

For those who may not be aware of the incident for which Durkin was being investigated , it was his involvement in the June death of former Maryland offensive lineman Jordan McNair. McNair was a redshirt freshman who collapsed at the team’s first organized workout of the summer on May 29th, 2018. This was due to apparent heat exhaustion. He went to the hospital and was reported as being in “critical but stable condition” (Connors, 2018). McNair died two weeks later on June 13th and an investigation into his death was started almost immediately.

Durkin was later found to be present during the incident and was eventually placed on leave along with two medical staffers. The report later found that Maryland’s training staff failed to properly recognize McNair’s signs of heat exhaustion (Connors, 2018). The USM Board then began to conduct their own investigation. Much later on Tuesday, October 29th, after multiple meetings about the investigation, the Board announced that Durkin would be able to keep his job. The day after the reinstatement, he was fired from his position.

This timeline of events is very strange regardless of how anybody may feel about the incident itself. Those close to the incident such as McNair’s family member or teammates were surprised that Durkin was even reinstated in the first place. This was because of the very negative-leaning findings of how he and the training staff had handled McNair’s condition. Durkin’s firing coming the day after his reinstatement makes the situation even stranger.

The fact that this happened raises many different questions on the part of sports fans. Had the University planned to fire Durkin no matter what the Board of Regents decided? Did they only decide to do this during the short period of time between his reinstatement and firing? One could argue that the huge backlash from the media and it’s followers could have had a lot to do with the firing. It appeared that most people were opposed to the Board’s decision and this opposition may have forced the University to make a decision for the sake of their public relations.

The fact remains that at the end of the day, a young man is dead. Whether this was due to the carelessness of his coaches or because of some sort of freak accident is still up in the air. While this may never be known for certain, some may say that Durkin’s firing needed to happen for the sake of justice.

References

Connors, R. (2018, October 31). A timeline of Maryland football, from DJ Durkin’s hiring until now. SB Nation. Retrieved from https://www.testudotimes.com/maryland-terps-football/2018/10/30/17921896/maryland-football-dj-durkin-jordan-mcnair-wallace-loh

Dotson, K., & Almasy, S. (2018, November 1). Maryland football coach DJ Durkin fired a day after being reinstated. CNN.com. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/31/us/maryland-football-coach-durkin-fired/index.html

National Media Aims to Make Le’Veon Bell Bad Guy in Holdout Fiasco

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Drew Gallagher is a first-year undergraduate student at Bowling Green State University. He is a working towards getting a major in Sport Management and a minor in General Business. He is a proud native of Aurora, Illinois and is interested in many sports. He generally focuses on Baseball and Football at both the professional and collegiate levels.

Another week goes by as Le’Veon Bell still has not signed his $14.5 million franchise tender with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Being as good as he is, one would think that his teammates and fans would be incredibly eager to get him back. This might have been the case when the Steelers started 1-2-1; but after two big wins against the Falcons and Bengals, and two consecutive 100-yard, 2-TD rushing games from James Conner, fans in Pittsburgh are much less reluctant to beg for Bell to come back.

Le’Veon Bell is still of course the best running back in the league. Those involved with the Steelers have seemed to come to terms with the fact that chances are, they won’t have him on their team next year no matter when he comes back this year. Most fans have even gone a step further and are in hopes that he won’t come back at all. According to a poll surveyed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the largest newspaper in the Pittsburgh area, 66% of people don’t want him to come back (Cook, 2018). Ben Roethlisberger has also expressed his neutral stance on the topic (Gentille, 2018). While this may not completely be his fault, national media has tended to put the blame on Bell throughout this entire process.

At first, they reported the story as if he was a selfish person and wasn’t concerned with how his team would fare this year without him. While this may be true from a certain standpoint, it seems that it is rare for anybody in the national media to take Bell’s side throughout the holdout. The truth is that this entire issue has been a long time coming between Le’Veon Bell and his current team of five years.

Bell has previously expressed communication issues with the Steelers regarding a contract extension for the pro-bowl running back. These issues have dated back to the 2016 off-season after his rookie contract had expired. He has been tagged twice since then as the two sides have still been unable to reach an agreement on an extension. Near the end of last season, Bell made it known to the media that if the Steelers decided to tag him again, he would consider holding out or even retiring (Quinn, 2018). During this year’s training camp, he also made it clear multiple times that he would not play in the regular season without a long-term contract and a good amount of guaranteed money. The media still seemed to be surprised and disappointed when he didn’t sign his franchise tender before the season started, and they continue to feel the same way every week that has gone by since.

The fact still remains that Bell has been over-worked by the Steelers in the past and has continuously risked injury while playing a position that is arguably the most dangerous in an already dangerous sport. Continuing to play would be a huge risk for Bell without a long-term contract. We’ll see how long this holdout lasts, but I’d be willing to bet that Bell will continue to remain the bad guy in the eyes of the media until then.

 

References

Cook, R. (2018, October 15). Ron Cook: One Steeler ready for Le’Veon Bell’s return — James Conner. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/ron-cook/2018/10/15/Ron-Cook-Steelers-running-back-James-Conner-welcome-back-Le-Veon-Bell-Deion-Sanders-Ben-Roethlisberger-ESPN/stories/201810160027

Gentille, S. (2018, October 23). Ben Roethlisberger has thoughts on ‘Coach Todd’ and Le’Veon Bell. Sort of. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/steelers/2018/10/23/patrick-peterson-steelers-ben-roethlisberger-937-the-fan-leveon-bell-james-conner/stories/201810230110

Quinn, S. (2018, October 10). The unabridged timeline of Le’Veon Bell’s holdout. In 247sports.com. Retrieved from https://247sports.com/nfl/pittsburgh-steelers/ContentGallery/LeVeon-Bell-absence-timeline-121486548/#121486548_4