Money Makes the Sports World Go Out of Orbit

“Dull Day 3,” said Dan Henning.

Dull Day?

Hardly. Henning is throwing this little party called training camp, which will never be mistaken for Mardi Gras, and he cannot be sure who is coming.

Always the optimist, even when he is barking up an empty tree, Henning was more inclined to label the possible defections of Marion Butts and Lee Williams as rumors.

“I’m not sure,” he said drolly, “that anybody’s not coming in.”

Don’t try to either diagram that sentence or work through the double negatives. Simply understand that Henning won’t believe he has holdouts until he doesn’t see them on the practice field today.

The root of these holdouts is . . . ta da . . . money.

Henning has some thoughts on this, which isn’t surprising. He has thoughts on a lot of things and is not afraid to express them. A couple of years ago, he seriously proposed that Al Davis should be commissioner of the National Football League.

Reminded of this Wednesday, he said: “He should be.”

So there. No backing down from this man.

Money crept into the conversation Wednesday because the anticipated absences of Butts and Williams (as well as No. 1 draft pick Stanley Richard) were the topic of conversation in the post-practice media confab.

“It’s a damn shame,” he said, “all we’ve got to do is talk about people that aren’t here.”

Henning knew little of Williams’ complaint, but the Butts situation ate at what he considers to be the inequity of the entire NFL pay structure.

“The whole system is screwed up,” he said. “Take the Butts situation. He gets a 400% raise last year, so how can you say he’s not being treated fairly? But then you’ve got guys on this team who weren’t voted MVP who are making more money than he is.”

What we’re talking is incongruity.

It gets even more absurd when reports filter in about No. 1 draft choices signing for $3 million and $4 million and more for three or four years.

“These guys,” Henning said ruefully, “have never played a down in the NFL. It’ll take 10 years for Butts to make that kind of money.”

A choice who came to mind was James FitzPatrick, one of the Chargers’ first-round picks in 1986 out of USC. Fatz was a rather giant bust, literally and figuratively.

“To think FitzPatrick made more money to sign here than Butts will make in his first five years is ridiculous,” Henning said.

At this point, you might expect Alex Spanos’ temper would be boiling over the rim of the caldron. It never seems to be that far away anyway, and it sounds very much like his head coach is sentimentally aligning himself with a disgruntled player.

Not so.

Henning’s point is not that Butts is under paid, but rather that unproven players are over paid as they come into the league with nothing more than scrapbooks and potential.

“The (NFL) Players Assn.,” he said, “should be looking into ways to put the money with the players who have done it.”

He is 100% right.

As the system stands now, for example, a player is almost stigmatized by the round in which he is drafted. Marion Butts was a seventh-round draft choice. Raises tend to come in relation to what a player was previously making rather than what he has done, hence a seventh-round pick will take much longer to work his way up the salary ladder than a first-round pick.

Henning would like to see draft choices paid on a more consistent (and conservative) scale, leaving more money for players who have established themselves.

This makes too much sense, it would seem, to work. But why won’t it? The members of the NFL Players Assn. are athletes who have established themselves. Why wouldn’t they want to legislate against college kids coming in and making more money for showing up than they have made for paying dues?

Think about it.

Henning has.

If the Chargers were not in position to have to pay a Stanley Richard some $3 million over three years, maybe Butts would have gotten a better contract a year ago than the one he signed. I’m not going to be so naive as to say he would have. Just maybe.

Henning has other ideas too, none of which are likely to sit well with the Players Assn. He contemplates scales that would pay all players according to what they actually produce or, better yet, what success the team enjoys.

He had a twinkle in his eye.

“How about if we made every game winner take all?” he asked. “You’d see some football, wouldn’t you?”

Geez, maybe Dan Henning was wrong when he suggested Al Davis should be the commissioner. Maybe Dan Henning would be a better candidate.