This Isn't Your Father's Nfl, Or Even Your Big Brother's

The birth of the Titans merely is one example of the sweeping effect of the current economic system

HAS IT REALLY BEEN ONLY eight years since unfettered free agency was introduced to the NFL? The game has changed so dramatically during that time that it seems like decades. With players--and even teams--moving around at a head-spinning rate, free agency has had an impact far greater than what the NFL players association and the team owners imagined when they agreed on the system in 1993.

To start with, dynasties are a thing of the past. Remember when the Green Bay Packers won five rifles in the 1960s, the Pittsburgh Steelers won four in the '70s, and the San Francisco 49ers won four in the 1980s? Gone. Remember when just four teams--the Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, and Oakland Raiders--won championships from 1971 to 1980? Gone. Remember when NFC teams rattled off Super Bowl victories every year from 1984 to 1996? Gone.

The reason is simple: The salary cap--free agency's evil twin--has made it nearly impossible for championship teams to hold on to their best players. In the climate that exists today, the Packers of the '60s never could have kept their nucleus of 10 future Hall-of-Famers intact. Now it's a feat simply to repeat as a division champion. No division champ from 1997 repeated in '98, and only one from '98, the Jacksonville Jaguars, did so last season. Three of the four conference finalists in 1998--the Denver Broncos, Atlanta Falcons, and New York Jets--didn't even reach the playoffs last year.

But the effect of free agency has extended way beyond the playing field. The system also has created "franchise" free agency, with teams leaving cities in order to secure better stadium deals--and in turn, another stream of revenue--in order to have the funds to compete for the best free agents, who require hefty signing bonuses.

The size of the market a team plays in is no longer important, as evidenced by the success of franchises like the Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, and St. Louis Rams. What truly matters is the revenue a stadium is able to generate, through such things as luxury boxes, personal seat licenses, and signage.

Two teams--the Rams and the Raiders--left Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest media market, after the 1994 season for St. Louis and Oakland because they wanted better stadium setups. The Oilers abandoned Houston in 1997 and ultimately morphed into the Tennessee Titans in small-market Nashville. And one of the game's most venerable franchises, the Cleveland Browns, moved to Baltimore in 1996 and became the Ravens.

Ironically, for all the havoc free agency has wrought, only a small percentage of unrestricted free agents actually change teams each year, ranging from a high of 171 in 1995 to a low of 85 in 1997.

Still, those numbers are a bit deceiving because players who are cut by their teams strictly for monetary reasons aren't designated as unrestricted free agents. (An unrestricted free agent is a player who opts not to re-sign with his old team after his contract expires.) For example, the Washington Redskins made quite a splash in the offseason by signing Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Mark Carrier, and Jeff George, but technically, those players weren't unrestricted free agents because they all had been cut by their old teams.

From a fan's perspective, one of the biggest problems with free agency is that it has made it seemingly impossible to keep track of which players are on which teams. You won't see many more players like John Elway or Dan Marino, who spent their entire careers with the same team and became synonymous with their respective communities.

This, of course, means that fans don't bond with the home team the way they once did. Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, laments how teams' identities now are ever-changing. The Steelers have lost 27 starters since the advent of free agency, and of their 22 projected starters in 2000, only eight were first-stringers in the team's last playoff season in 1997.

"I really think that's one of the problems that we have in today's game," Rooney says. "You don't have a whole lot of players anymore who just grow up with you and finish with you like those teams we had in the 1970s. We got those guys when they were kids, and they went on to become maybe the best team ever." Rooney would like to implement some restrictions on free agency, but that would be tough to sell to the players, many of whom have grown extraordinarily wealthy under the current framework.

With so many players jumping around, the league has been robbed of marquee teams to tout. It now is almost impossible to predict which teams will be good in a given season--can you say St. Louis Rams?--something that has adversely affected the ratings of ABC's "Monday Night Football," which chooses its lineup based on the previous year's results. Although it was the third-highest-rated show in prime time on network TV last year, it still had its lowest ratings ever.

The result was a shake-up in the booth that saw Boomer Esiason fired and comedian Dennis Miller and former quarterback Dan Fouts hired. But when the new announcing team made its much-hyped debut at the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio, in August, ratings plunged 28% from last year's Hall of Fame game.

The network attributed the dip to the fact that the starting time for the program was moved up an hour due to the Republican convention. The real problem, however, was that the game featured the 49ers and the New England Patriots, and the Niners--once one of the league's flagship teams--no longer are much of a lure. ABC is counting on new powers such as the Rams and the Indianapolis Colts to fill the void, but those teams will have to stay on top long enough to become familiar to fans across the country. And for all the reasons we've stated, there is no guarantee of that happening.

The lesson? The teams still are the attraction, not talking heads in the TV booth.

The advent of free agency has made the draft more important than it ever was. The draft offers a way to tap into inexpensive players and tie them up for four years, while free agents wind up costing so much money that general managers can't build around them in a meaningful way.

"You can't get well in free agency," says Colts general manager Bill Polian, "but you can get ill very quick--financially ill if you make a lot of mistakes. You pay a heavy price financially for failure in the free-agent market."

"This always has been and always will be a draft league," adds Rams general manager Charley Armey. "Free agency has magnified the importance of the draft, not lessened it. With the salary-cap restraints, you can't keep signing a bunch of free agents year after year. The core of your team still must come out of the draft."

The Buffalo Bills are considered a model franchise in this era. They have turned over their entire roster since going to their first Super Bowl in 1990, yet they had just one losing season in that decade. How'd they do it? The draft, of course. "The draft is the bloodline of your organization," says Bills GM John Butler. "When you bring your own up the ranks, they know your philosophy, they know your system. You know them so much better than you know a free agent."

The 49ers, in contrast, spent heavily in free agency, handing out signing bonuses that now have come due, and they have collapsed as a result. The plight of the Niners wasn't lost on second-year Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, who jettisoned many of his high-priced veteran players in the offseason.

"I think it's fair to say that free agency hasn't been the panacea everyone thought it was going to be," Holmgren says. "In the beginning, it was like a new toy, and everyone thought it would win the championship for you. Some teams have done very well with it, but it's not the blanket answer."

"Statistics have proven that there is a lot of money being paid out to players who are not starting anymore or even playing anymore. You can't ignore what has happened in the past in free agency, and that helps you put on the brakes." One way teams have started to put on the brakes is by locking up their key players with long-term deals so they don't hit the free-agent market in the prime of their careers.

When the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville joined the league in 1995, free agency was only in its third year, and there were an abundance of players on the market. Powered by several free-agent signings, both teams reached the conference title games in only their second seasons in the league.

The Browns, with nearly $40 million to spend, wanted to make the same kind of impact when they entered the league last year. "We're looking to bring aboard any significant player who can have a major impact on the team. Neither cap nor cash should be an impediment in our going forward in free agency," president Carmen Policy said.

But the pickings were slim for the Browns, who wound up overspending for such players as Lomas Brown and Orlando Brown and went 2-14 in their first season. As for Year 2? Let's just say it won't climax with an appearance in the AFC Championship Game.

The latest team to dive head-first into free agency is Washington. Owner Daniel Snyder has spent about $100 million this year in an attempt to reach the Super Bowl, mortgaging his future in much the same way the 49ers did in the '90s. He has plenty of big-name talent--Sanders and Smith are both future Hall-of-Famers--but the roster is somewhat aged and may wither in the stretch run of the season.

And even if the Redskins do step up and somehow win Super Bowl 35, they aren't built to last. That, however, would make them a fitting team to capture the first NFL title of the new century.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

SINCE THE INCEPTION OF FREE AGENCY IN 1993, Players have been moving all over the NFL map. Here's a look at the number of unrestricted free agents who signed with new teams each year:

Year   Number   Year   Number
1993    108     1997     85
1994    121     1998    110
1995    171     1999    115
1996     99     2000    107

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