Here is a provocative question: "Why are the Browns playing hardball with Myles Garrett as if he is their property?"
The answer is not simple however perhaps if Myles Garrett is financially prepared to take a season off, which I believe he is, he could be a change agent by opening a conversation about fairness in employment law as it relates to professional sports.
Fact: In European professional sports, if an athlete wants to change employer, it works much more like it works for regular working folks. In European soccer, players can change teams despite having multiyear contracts due to the transfer system, which operates differently from how contracts work in American sports. Here’s how it works:
- Unlike in American sports, where trades are common, European soccer teams buy out a player’s contract by paying a transfer fee to the selling club.
- If a player is under contract, the buying club negotiates with the selling club to agree on a transfer price. Once they agree, the player is free to negotiate personal terms with the new team.
- Some contracts have release clauses, meaning if a club offers a pre-agreed fee (e.g., €100M), the selling club is obligated to let the player go.
- In some leagues (like Spain’s La Liga), players can directly buy out their own contracts using funds (often provided by the new team).
Why is it different in the US?
Your guess is as good as mine but there's a long tradition in the US of owners seeing employees as tantamount to property. Most American fans would get angry that I even think the thought that Myles Garrett should have the same freedom to change employer that each of us have. Why? Because he's well paid? Myles Garrett is well paid for one reason. He is the best in the world at what he does and in our capitalist system he is paid his market value, not a penny more. The fact that he's the best of the best and paid accordingly in no way justifies him being stuck working a job that he's unhappy with.
Myles Garrett might need to highlight that he is not anybody's property by engaging in a long holdout and maybe the absurdity of the Browns refusing to let him leave will become apparent to all of us. Garrett can help that debate along by communicating in no uncertain terms that he is not property he is a human being.
I for one hope Myles Garrett will go down in history as helping open the door to a transfer system that allows freedom of movement to professional athletes.
