The Franchise Tag Should Be In Every Sport

Mar 4, 2014

Year in and year out during the NFL off-season I see teams place a franchise tag on somebody. Every year I always wondered exactly what it meant. This year I decided to fully check it out and I think the NFL Franchise Tag is pure certified dopeness. I personally think every professional sport should have the franchise tag or at least something close to it.

What the franchise tag does is, it lets teams place a tag on a pending unrestricted free agent on their team. With that tag they are guaranteed one more year with that franchise. That said player will get paid at a similar salary as the top 5 players at that position. So pretty much it would be beneficial to both parties. The team won’t lose a great player for nothing and the player will get paid some great money.  Then the tag breaks down into two types: exclusive and non-exclusive. With an exclusive franchise tag a player is pretty much bound to that one team but with and non exclusive that player can negotiate with other teams and if they sign a contract with that team you can match it, and if you chose not to you get two first round picks. Oh yeah and you have this option every year but only for one player.

All that sounds good to me. If other sports had that then it could create more balance in those leagues. Players wouldn’t be able to just go to the big market team to chase a ring, they would have to really pay their dues with the team that drafted them. I know other sports have similar rules but I think this would be pretty cool to integrate. We would be looking at completely different leagues, which might not be a bad thing.