The Math(is) just doesn't add up

Day 3076 in the NFL off season. Ok so that's an exaggeration, but it feels like it. It's not that I expect anything amazing to happen, it's just that sense of depression when you wake up wondering if any fantastic news story has broken over night and find that no, nothing has happened. You come home from work, spin around the web looking for news worthy nuggets of interest and all you get is "xyz player is holding out from VOLUNTARY mini camps in protest at his contract, blah, blah". The latest addition to this list is Robert Mathis, DE of the Colts. It would appear that Mathis is tired of playing second fiddle to Freeny. Of course the best way to fix that is to prove you're actually worth as much as Freeny and at the minute, apology's Robert, you're not. The difference between them isn't perhaps night and day, but it is morning compared to evening, an analogy that made much more sense in my head then it appears to on paper (or even on a digital screen). I just don't get it. Mathis still has two years left on his current deal, a five year, $30 million contract. Yeah. 5 years. $30 million. Two years still left. Come back and see me next year. What makes these holdouts even more annoying is that very rarely is the money spread evenly out across the deal. Sure a back up will get his salary spread fairly thin, but the reality is that guys like Freeny, Mathis and just about every other recognisable name in the NFL get quite a chunk of their money up straight away, the so-called "front loaded contract". So essentially what these players do is take a big wad of cash from the teams - usually over the first two or three years - then when that runs dry and they're back to receiving the base salary they go back to the table looking for another, bigger, front loaded deal. Truth is, football players often make way above what their average annual salary suggests, because they take so much of it early and then come back dipping for more before the deal expires. This is why I don't have sympathy for holdouts. Pay me $100,000 per year to play football for ten years and I'd be pretty damn happy. For $250,000 a year I'd be off the charts happy. But that's enough of my woes, have a great day everyone.