Maybe Crabtree's Not So Crazy After All

It is difficult, if not impossible, to see whatever Michael Crabtree is up to as anything other than idiotic. But I am like Samuel L. Jackson's God-fearing character Jules in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. "I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard." And this is the sliver of light I see:

Crabtree is trying to be to the NFL what Curt Flood was to Major League Baseball. He is daring to be a revolutionary who leads a shackled group to freedom.

The only problem is neither Crabtree nor his handlers have couched his fight in such egalitarian terms. They seem merely to be out for self.

Maybe Curt Flood was out for himself, too, when he first thumbed his nose at the way pro baseball did business with its laborers in 1969. When Flood's employer of a dozen seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals, traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies in the fall of 1969, he refused to go. He thumbed his nose at baseball's so-called "reserve clause" that bound a player in perpetuity to the club owning his contract.

In a letter to Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner at the time, Flood wrote: "After 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several states."

Kuhn dismissed Flood's challenge. Flood responded by filing a lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball. It wound up in the Supreme Court, where baseball won. Flood's career ended in a feeble comeback attempt with my hometown Washington Senators in 1971.

But Flood's challenge was a tipping point for free agency in baseball, which started in earnest after another challenge to the system in 1975.

The system Crabtree is fighting is no less restrictive and arbitrary. It is the so-called "slotting" system the NFL employs to remunerate draft choices. It just happens to make a lot more sense on the face of it than baseball's old reserve clause -- at least until you realize it requires nothing less than collusion.

The collusion comes in because the teams basically agree to pay their newly minted pros based on where they are selected in the draft rather than for what is their potential worth, unless, of course, you believe that where a player is drafted is equal to his value. As a result, the first player drafted is rewarded with the fattest compensation package; the second player is rewarded with the second biggest deal, and so on.

Crabtree was picked 10th in April's draft by the San Francisco 49ers. He is a receiver and was thought by most to be the best receiver coming out of college.

However, another receiver, Darrius Heyward-Bey, was selected before Crabtree with the 7th pick by Oakland. Heyward-Bey signed a five-year contract for $23.5 million. San Francisco then offered Crabtree the same length contract for $3.5 million less.

Crabtree has refused the offer. He has demanded not only Heyward-Bey money but, reportedly, a lot more -- maybe twice as much more. His handlers, like a relative of his I've known for years, David Wells, have suggested he's willing to sit out the entire season and re-enter the draft next year rather than sign with San Francisco for what he thinks is less than his worth. My attempts to contact Crabtree's agent Eugene Parker haven't yielded as much as a courtesy response.

I've been part of the choir singing that Crabtree is nuts. After all, a dollar today is worth more than it is tomorrow. He'll never recoup the offer on the table today, unless some team next year pays him more than what he thinks he's worth this year. That's highly unlikely. It would also be a sign that some other team has told him as much already, which would be tampering, a charge San Francisco just leveled against the New York Jets. The Jets have denied it and the league is about to look into it.

Crabtree isn't crazy if, however, it is the system he is waging war against and not the Niners. Given the beating his reputation is taking, he and his handlers would be wise at this point to adopt such a stance, too.

After all, slotting isn't fair. It's just neat and easy. That's why just about every pro sports league uses it. The NBA effectively implements a rookie pay scale that removes any bargaining from the process. (But at least a would-be pro basketball player now has Europe as an option.)

In the NFL, Team A pays Draft Pick No. 1 X-amount of dollars and every other team falls in line behind. Nothing else matters -- not the need of the team or the accomplishments of the drafted player. The players who will put their health on the line playing the violent game we love that makes the owners billionaires have little more bargaining power than Curt Flood did. It's take it, or leave it. Crabtree so far is leaving it. It is a move of incalculable risk.

If Crabtree maintains his protest, he won't likely be the next draft's hot new thing. It'll be someone else and he'll lose draft position and more earning power. And if he fares as well as Mike Williams, another highly regarded college receiver who missed a year between college and the NFL, he'll be out of the league before he can qualify for his pension. The league moves that fast and skills, perceived or real, can diminish that quickly.

But if Crabtree prevails and gets what he wants, which is to be compensated for what has been extrapolated from his college career rather than what rung he landed on in the draft, the reward will be immeasurable for draft picks that come after him. The NFL's human auction, whether Crabtree realizes it, will be busted.