Length of Contracts in the Sports.

[Dressler]

With the recent never ending saga of Ilya Kovalchuck and the NHL deciding his 17 year 102$Million bucks was not a league permitted contract, even though such deals have been going on for a while (See Hossa, Ovechkin), it has sprung a debate I'd like to continue here in The Sports Stadium.

In my opinion the league that has gotten it right for Contracts is the NBA. It, for starters, has a Draftee Maximum, as does the NHL, but in the NBA teams can offer an extra year (or two, correct me if I'm wrong) to the length of a contract to a player they drafted entering his first year of Free Agency, plus they can add money (obviously). This gives the advantage to the Teams to keep there Superstars and not have to worry about other teams with more Cap Space offering ridiculous deals. Plus there is a restraint on the length of the deal, I believe it is 7 years for the original team and 6 years for a new team.

This way you don't have these ridiculous "Front Loaded" contracts, nor do you see crazy long contracts such as the 17 year deal with Kovalchuck (NHL), and almost every player in the NFL, once proven "Elite" gets upwards of 10+ Year contracts (Albeit not guaranteed).

In my opinion, for the new NHL CBA they should adopt something like the NBA's current CBA on contracts, with Med-Level exceptions, Rookie Deals, NBA Minimum and such, plus make a hard length rule, no contracts up to 5-8 years or something like that.

So I ask you, what, if any, should the length of contracts in any sport be aloud to be? Or should there be no restriction at all?

 

[I Suck Ass]

I think that if a player wants to, they can sign it. The 17-year deal is a bit excessive, but hockey and baseball are the only sports that usually have long contracts, and they are only given to star players, or high-end free agents. Sometimes a long-term contract can be a risk (Alfonso Soriano), but most of the time, they pan out. Football and basketball usually have 4-8 year contracts, and that works for those sports. There shouldn't be a limit as to how long a player signs for just because it would be another thing that teams have to worry about when signing a player.

 

[Ferbian]

I honestly don't see the problem in signing a long deal contract. In the end of the day its about what the club as well as the player wants to. If someone wants to be signed for 17 years, then let him be signed for 17 years. Besides it's not so bad that you can't get out of the contract, there's releases etc. all kind of ways to get out of your contract.

Besides it's allowed in other places, I mean in regular work places you could probably be hired by a company for up to 20-30 years if that's what you want. Negotiations can change of course, but it still happens. Bret Hart was supposedly signing a 20 year deal with Vince McMahon about a year or so before he went to WCW. Why shouldn't NBA or any other sport be allowed to do so if Vince McMahon or any other business man in a large company would be able to do it.

I don't know how long it should be, I think it should be an indefinite period of time that should be allowed. Let the clubs and players decide.

 

[Fire Marshall Bill]

The problem with NBA contracts is that they're guaranteed in probably the worst sport to have guaranteed contracts. Because of that you have too many Eddy Curry's.

I don't see a problem with long term contracts as long as the franchise is willing to take that chance. What if he signs a 17 year contract and in year 2 he gets injury prone? I'm sure the NHL has buy-outs and stuff like that but it's still a lot of money to fork over for someone who isn't worth much anymore.

But if you look into why they rejected the deal it had little to do with the length and more to do with how it figured their average salary towards him. The last 3 or 4 years he was getting paid crap (relatively) so the average salary would lower drastically. This was their attempt to circumvent the salary cap. That's why they rejected it.