Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I find that I have no sympathy for NFL players who hold out on their contracts. Of course, my frustration is probably nothing compared to how much it annoys the teams in question – especially in the case of first round draft picks like Michael Crabtree.

After reading this article, it’s Crabtree that I’m mostly thinking about, I suppose. He is one of the players I followed quite closely before the draft, and I was really looking forward to watching him play, when he was picked in the first round. In college, he utterly dominated, earning back to back awards for the best wide receiver in the nation. He is an explosive player with fantastic hands, and he would have made the San Fransisco 49ers an instantly entertaining offensive team. In fact, he was very probably the best player in the draft.

The trouble is that he knows that. It’s just that with an injury preventing him working out for teams, he dropped a little lower in the draft than he would have anticipated. On top of that, another receiver was picked before him, which he will probably have taken as a personal insult. Now he wants paying, and he wants paying more money that the 49ers want to give him as the 10th pick in the draft. In fact, he’s even threatening to hold out the entire season, and re-enter the draft in a years time.

That’s the sort of thing that really annoys me. I would have assumed that, after dedicating over half your life to the game of American football, and hoping and dreaming to play in the NFL, when you finally get that opportunity you would take it in a heartbeat. Should the money really matter, if you are going to make a living playing a game, and a game that you love? You don’t have to work 9-5 in an office, answering phones and sitting behind a computer screen – you are playing sport for a living. And, no matter how disappointing he found the offer, it would have still been in the millions per year.

And that just really amazes me.