JAG
02-27-2004, 01:20 PM
Gotta love this little segment from this week's Tip Sheet: "The league's dirty little secret that, in a week of turmoil, remained swept under the rug? There is (and we know we say this every year) more tampering going on with pending free agents than at any other time in the history of the current player movement system. It was nearly impossible to sit down to dine at any Indianapolis restaurant last week, during the draft combine, and not bump into an owner engaged in conversation with a player representative about a pending free agent. League officials just seem to think the free agency period doesn't start until Wednesday and, if that's really the mindset, they are being hopelessly naïve. There already are visitations planned for some of the high-profile unrestricted players -- one team, and you can pretty much figure out who it is, has plans for several big-time defenders to be in its complex in the opening days of free agency -- and probably a few contract agreements already in place. There isn't a lot the league can do in such cases to police its own anti-tampering rules. Then again, anything the league does will be more than it has done in most years, when the rules eschewing contact with a player still under contract were unabashedly ignored."