#10. One-Day Signings to Retire | The 10 Worst Things About Sports
Imagine you're an excellent McDonald's employee. You spend 20 years working hard without complaints from customers, and your bosses see your hard work and potential. As the years go on, you start to feel unappreciated. Eventually, you leave McDonald's for Burger King after being offered more money. You spend the next 15 years working yourself up the ranks in the Burger King organization, and it eventually comes time for you to retire.
It's your very last day, but instead of putting on your Burger King polo shirt, you decide to dust off your McDonald's apron and ask your old boss to allow you to spend your final work hours as an employee of McDonald's.
A few days ago, I mentioned that I would be starting a series to discuss the 10 things I hate most in sports. I'm here with #10, which is one-day signings to retire, which I feel is as silly as the scenario mentioned above.
One-Day Signings to Retire
For decades at an increasing rate, players at the end of their career sign one-day contracts with their former team for the sole reason of saying that they "retired a Cowboy," or "finished with the Jets." The move has little if any significance because players can choose what team to go into the Hall of Fame under if they are selected. Retiring with a team under a one-day contract is more of a publicity stunt than a meaningful transaction.
Emmitt Smith, after breaking the all-time rushing record with the Arizona Cardinals, decided to retire in 2004. But before he would retire, we signed a one-day contract and scheduled a press conference with the Dallas Cowboys.
I can't blame a player for getting one last media event out of their career, but as a fan, I find these signings unnecessary and a sign of an overinflated ego. We know you were good, we know what teams you played for, and you didn't end your career with the team you loved the most. Does signing a one-day contract change that? Do these athletes really feel like they retired for that team without playing a single down or facing a pitch in the batter's box after signing that meaningless piece of paper?
If the team would have truly valued that player and the player really wanted to finish their career with that team, wouldn't they have worked together to make that happen?
But this dumb tradition goes deeper. More than 17 years after his last throw in the NFL, quarterback Dan Marino, who had already been enshrined in the Hall of Fame, signed a one-day contract to officially retire as a Miami Dolphin. C'mon, really? I'm all for remembering the greats, but put up a statue or let them speak to fans at halftime, why sign them to the active roster of your team for one day so they can pretend they actually retired while playing for your team?
What do you think? Is this a tradition worth keeping, or a tired tradition that needs to be...retired? Comment below.
I think it’s a PR sign of respect & gratitude from an organization for the many many sacrifices the retirees made. The more respect given to the players the better.
The league treats its talent like prostitiutes in general, use them up & throw away, maybe if they play a decade with CTE they get a little tiny respect.
The piece of shit NFL would not even let Jr Seau’s family speak at his HOF ceremony. Or how about the treatment of the old retirees who built the league?
It is a bullshit signing for one day, but the whole league & game is bullshit built on young impressionable boys brain damage, corruption, deception & marketing propaganda.
Football may be the single most successful tool used to dumb down America. Brain damage for everyone who played, & tribal populist cognitive dissonance for all the “super fans” out there. I’ll never watch another football game or have a fake conversation about that game.
Every time I see a grown man wearing another mans football jersey, I think to myself, that guy is a cuckold & a bitch worshipping an actual man’s balls, usually while simultaneously screaming pussy or some other tough guy shit at the TV.
Just look at the drunken violence in the seats of almost every football game, that is footballs true contribution to society right there.
I agree that they need to give more respect to players, but it just feels like the team capitalizing on a marketing opportunity. Yeah, you make a lot of great points here. lol, you feel very strongly about this I see. I don't talk shit at the TV, but do enjoy sports. Yeah, many sports fans are hypocrites for sure. I think they would find something else to be violent and drunken at for sure, but there hasn't been enough done to prevent that either.
Definitely one of my strongest feelings, I ignore the game for the most part, but feel compelled to rant every once in a while.
I LOVE sports, but the commercial culture sickens me. I might still occasionally watch & enjoy football if kids were no longer allowed to play till about 25 years old (same reasons they’re not allowed to drink till 21) & there was real respect for players & their sacrifices.