Yesterday Andre Smith’s agent Alvin Keels left Cincinnati on a jet plane without getting him a deal to be a Bengal. Keels spent four hours negotiating with Mike Brown… and they could not strike a deal. Let me say that again in caps for dramatic effect: THEY SPENT FOUR HOURS AND COULD NOT AGREE ON A CONTRACT!!!! Four… Ow… Wers… What were they talking about during that time? What escalators need to be met for him to get a lifetime of Big Macs? Paris Hilton spends slightly less time deciding what outfit she’ll wear (should I wear the slutty outfit? The ho outfit? Or the slutty ho outfit?).

The two sides apparently are millions of dollars apart. Something like 10 millions dollars. You and I will never sniff ten million dollars, let alone talk about a monetary value that could still be worth something when you subtract ten million dollars. Mike Brown offered Smith, the no. 6 pick this year, less money than the sixth pick from last year. Last year! How do you low ball someone like that? How does his little mind not understand that comparable picks in subsequent years receive at least a higher offer than the year before? What planet is Mike Brown from? (The “I’m so cheap and bad at evaluating football talent that I should be forced to stay at whatever this planet’s real name is and hopefully this place has no oxygen so I die a painful death” planet)

Seriously, this guy is giving Dartmouth graduates a bad name. I just read an article on espn.com today, and the writer characterized Mike Brown as “belonging to an older time,” and that he goes canoeing in a polo shirt and nice khakis. If this were anyone else, anyone in the entire universe, I would chalk it up to just being eccentric. This guy is a freak and should not be allowed within 100 miles of any football team, let alone owning and managing one.

Okay now, Mike Brown miraculously is not entirely to blame for this fiasco. I will at least give him the concession that rookie contracts for NFL players are getting out of hand. Look at the other professional sports. Do you hear any hold outs from NBA players? (Okay, so no one really pays attention to the NBA, but you get my point) MLB players? It happens more often, but only occasionally. MLB agents have less leverage than an NFL agent because baseball players have zero impact on the major league clubs for at least an average of three years. The NFL really needs to work on a better system where the league sets the salaries each year, and maybe allow some additional negotiation for top ten QB picks… That’s it. It’s imperative that the league changes this because it only hurts the NFL. The first round draft picks lose some valuable time preparing for their first year, harming their chances for an impact on a team that desperately needs an impact player. The reason why the NFL has become the #1 sport in America is because it has true parity, unlike baseball and basketball where there are only a few strong teams and a ton of mediocre/bad teams.

This doesn’t let Mike Brown off the hook. If this is the business game that he’s in now, he has to either play ball or quit and let someone else who knows the playing field manage this team. I know these rookie prices are exorbitant and ultimately unfair, but if this is the hand he’s dealt, there are just no excuses.