NFL Free Agency Won’t Give Big Markets a Big Advantage

In July, even NFL antitrust trials go on vacation. Take the next two weeks off and think it over--those were the instructions given the owners and the players as they set out to strike some kind of accord on The Great Fear, free agency.

Trailing as they are, the owners need the time to regroup and rethink, particularly on the issue of free agency destroying the competitive balance within professional football and turning the Super Bowl into another segregated country club--big markets only.

Major-league baseball has had free agency since 1975 and we have seen what the annual spend-a-thon has meant to the richest teams in the largest cities.

Basically, it has ripped them to shreds.

In and around Los Angeles, the Dodgers and Angels are in last place in their respective divisions, a combined 32 games out of first.

In New York, neither the Mets nor the Yankees are above .500. The Mets spent nearly $40 million last winter on free agents Bobby Bonilla and Eddie Murray and now they have the worst team batting average in the majors. The Yankees, the long-running Best Team Money Can Buy, bought Danny Tartabull and Mike Gallego over the off-season, propelling them from fifth place in the American League East to fourth.

In Chicago, the Cubs have had the wherewithal to outbid the field in recent winters for Andre Dawson, George Bell, Danny Jackson and Dave Smith. Last year, the Cubs went 77-83. This year, they are in fifth place.

Across town, the White Sox now have Bell, plus the hefty pay stubs on Steve Sax, Tim Raines and Bobby Thigpen, and all that has purchased them is fourth place.

Six big-market giants, one plus-.500 record (the White Sox are 43-42).

Six big-market giants, two World Series appearances in the last 10 years (the Mets in ‘86, the Dodgers in ‘88).

Toss out those two years and the World Series winners of the past decade have been from St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, Minnesota (twice), Oakland and Cincinnati.

Small-to-mid-sized markets all. The major league equivalents of Green Bay, Indianapolis and Phoenix.

Baseball free agency, which was supposed to squash the little guy and restore the Yankee-Dodger monopolies of the ‘40s and ‘50s, has accomplished just the opposite. Before and immediately after the birth, everybody repeated. The Oakland A’s won three World Series in a row, followed by back-to-back titles by the Reds and then the Yankees.

Now, anyone outside Cleveland can win. In the last 11 years, 23 of the major leagues’ 26 franchises have reached the playoffs at least once. All of the National League West has been represented since 1984. The only no-shows have been the Seattle Mariners (once an expansion team, always an expansion team) the Texas Rangers (which explains Bobby Valentine) and, of course, the Indians, who can’t help it if they happen to be sappy traditionalists.

Free agency has failed to fulfill The Pastime’s worst fears primarily for two reasons:

1) Once burned, twice warned. Early in the free-agent era, Gene Autry’s Angels were the game’s wildest spenders until Joe Rudi, Bruce Kison, John D’Acquisto and Bill Travers put a deep freeze on the credit cards. Big spenders become non-spenders in hurry once they discover $100,000 buys you a .232 hitter as easily as $4.5 million.

2) Money can’t buy you love. Pay your leadoff hitter $3 million, your No. 3 hitter wants $4 million. Pay your No. 3 hitter $4 million, your cleanup hitter wants $5 million. And if they can’t get it here, they’ll find it elsewhere, even in pick-and-choose markets like Minneapolis and Atlanta. There, such mid-sized models as Chili Davis and Terry Pendleton paid off in 1991 pennants.

If the owners of the NFL truly want to break up the 49ers and the Redskins, they will accept free agency. It has taken three years to reduce Plan B to a joke; has a reserve tackle led anyone to the Super Bowl lately? How about those punters? Plan B rewards mediocrity and then fosters it.

Hard to turn 3-13 into 13-3 when you’re bidding on the 10 worst players from each of the other 27 rosters around the league.

Unrestricted free agency after, say, five years under a team’s employ would close the gap between Washington and Anaheim, at least in theory. Once Barry Sanders makes himself available, the Rams would still have to pay the market price.

In other words, you can lead a Ram to the no-host bar, but you can’t make Georgia Frontiere drink.

And that’s another advantage of free agency: It provides the fans with a BS detector. If the hometown team says it is truly committed to fielding a winner, it now has to prove it. No more living off the fat of the television contract while throwing the hands in the air with a sheepish, “We’re trying, but no one makes big trades after Herschel Walker and you know the trouble with Plan B.”

Rather than tilting the field, NFL free agency would level it. Cut the best players loose and invite everyone to the auction. Let the Buccaneers bid against the Giants, the Cardinals against the Bills. See who’s satisfied with 5-11 . . . and who wants to go upscale.

The results could be a revelation.

Now I realize the owners have had it to here with revelations lately. But after being forced last week to reveal what they pay themselves--Norman Braman, for shame, for shame--the owners have to figure they’ve already weathered the worst of it.