Match Master Sports

Free agency is a dysfunctional system for determining salaries and team assignments in professional sports. The NFL, for example, produces a billion dollars per year in dead money. This amounts to 14% of the entire salary cap, or over a half-million dollars per player per year. This is a huge amount of money misdirected from the players who rightfully earn that money on the field. This is only part of the problem with free agency. Teams are forced to take unnecessary risks. Fans lose star players. Team chemistry is disrupted. Young players with little business experience risk their financial security on an unpredictable system. The problems go beyond these few mentioned. 

A better system has been developed: the Tiered Salary System. The Tiered Salary System uses reliable, fair, and time-tested market design principles to replace free agency. The system is better for teams, owners, and fans. It is also better for the players. Anyone with an interest in professional sports should consider it.

The Tiered Salary System is meant to work with a hard salary cap, as already exists in the NFL and NHL. Throughout this website, a hard cap is assumed. 

The matching system does not change the way the salary cap is negotiated. The salary cap would be determined exactly as it is now, by collective bargaining. There is no reason to believe the salary cap would be any different with the Tiered Salary System than with free agency. 

OVERVIEW

Matching markets are a specific form of market where discrete entities are partnered (paired, matched) for optimal advantage. Matching markets are utilized in very different situations than free, competitive markets. The idealized free market assumes a large number of buyers and sellers. The free market also assumes a homogeneous product; i.e., the products created by the sellers are relatively indistinguishable from each other. Because of this, buyers care little about which seller they purchase from, and sellers care little about which buyer to whom they sell. Buyers and sellers enter and leave the free market until there is an equilibrium between price and quantity. Matching markets work in different types of markets where each side (e.g., buyers and sellers) have specific preferences. For example, a seller of labor (i.e., an employee) cares about which entity buys his labor (i.e., the employer) and vice versa. The fact that matching markets are not considered to be “free, competitive” markets does not mean it does not work fairly.  

Matching markets have been most notably applied to human/labor markets, such as matching incoming high school students with different high schools. Each high school would have preferred students, and each student would have preferred schools. Matching markets could be used to pair college roommates, work partners, or many other sets of two groups where each member of each group can identify preferences. There are matching markets for which there is only one buyer for each seller in a match, and there are matching markets where each buyer matches several sellers.

Matching markets are best described as a set of rules so that the matches can be made to overall advantage. As a simplified example, imagine schools competing for students. Without a matching market, one school may try to make early offers to the best students with a “commit to us now or not at all” message. Students who wish to attend the other school are faced with the dilemma of accepting the lesser school or risk not being accepted at all. A matching market would regulate the timing so all schools and students receive the best offer within the rules of fair play.

MATCHING MARKETS

Safe Matches

There are several characteristics that help create successful matching markets. Perhaps the most important characteristic is that the market is considered “safe.” “Safe,” in this context, means that one is not penalized for declaring one’s true preferences. One can imagine a situation where if one attempts to gain a lofty choice, one may end up worse off than if one had initially selected a more realistic choice. That situation would require the participant to correctly predict the choices of others (gamesmanship) to get the best outcome. Since no one can predict what others will do with perfect accuracy, the situation is unpredictable or “unsafe.” For example, imagine a high school student being matched to a college. His/her preferences might be Harvard, State College, and City College, in that order. Also imagine that the student is a competitive candidate and should be accepted at State College and City College, but not at Harvard. A safe matching market would allow him/her to declare that Harvard is his/her first choice without decreasing the chances for State College. An unsafe market might have the student be accepted to State College if he/she puts State College as the first choice. However, if he/she states Harvard as the first choice, he/she might not only lose Harvard but State College as well and end up at City College. In an unsafe market, he/she would be penalized for stating his/her true preferences. There is no gamesmanship or penalties in a safe market. There is no reason to try to predict the actions of others to get the best result from the matching market.

The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) is an example, and perhaps the best example, of a current successful matching market. The NRMP was the solution to a problem faced by hospitals and medical school graduates in the middle of the 20th century. Residency positions started to come about in the early 1900’s and were created to provide specialty training, e.g., surgery, radiology, etc. These residency positions accepted physicians who had just graduated medical school. Hospitals soon discovered that training programs were to their advantage, as residents provided inexpensive labor for the hospital. This resulted in many more residency positions than medical school graduates to fill them. The performance of these residents greatly impacted how the hospital functioned, so there was competition among the residency programs to get the best graduates. 

To give themselves an advantage, certain hospitals began contacting the graduates earlier and earlier relative to graduation. Calls from hospitals offering positions to graduates moved from their senior year to the end of the junior year and finally to the beginning of the junior year. The hospitals gave an offer that had to be answered, yes or no, within a couple of days, even though graduation was almost 2 years away. The dilemma faced by the graduates was to accept offers from less preferred hospitals or risk waiting for the decision from more preferred hospitals.

This problem was solved by a matching system for residency programs. The matching system required that programs interview an appropriate number of medical school graduates, and graduates would apply to an appropriate number of programs. Programs would submit a list of (soon to be) graduates in order of preference, and the graduates would submit a list of residency programs in order of preference. They would be matched according to the following algorithm:

Round 1: All graduates are initially assigned to their first choice.

If some programs have too many graduates initially assigned to them, as the better programs often do, then the programs’ preference lists come into play. The programs keep the graduates at the top of their preference lists until their positions are filled. The rest of the graduates are released from that program.

Round 2: All graduates who were released from Round 1 are tentatively assigned to their second-choice program. Some programs will once again become too full and will release graduates.

The key feature of the matching algorithm occurs at this step. All graduates in round 2 would either have ranked the program #1, and survived the first round, or ranked the program #2; i.e., were released from their first choice during round #1. Graduates are then “released” at the end of round 2 based on the residency program’s preference, not based on whether the graduate in this round had ranked the program #1 or #2. In other words, the graduate is not penalized for ranking his/her true preference #1. Thus, there is no gamesmanship involved. The graduate, no matter his/her qualifications and likelihood to match into a top program, is not penalized for ranking prestigious programs at the top of his/her list, whether or not those choices were realistic. This makes the match, from the standpoint of the applicant, a “safe” match. It is also a safe match from the standpoint of the program. If the program has temporarily been assigned, at the end of a round, more medical graduates than it has positions, the program gets to “keep” whichever are the highest-ranking graduates. It is of no consequence if the program ranked the applicants (e.g., 3 applicants) are 1, 5, and 10; or 10, 20, and 30. Thus, the program can feel free to rank the very best applicants at the top of their rank list whether or not it is realistic that those applicants will rank that program highly.

Future rounds: Step 2 is repeated until there is no more movement; that is, no graduates need to be released because programs are too full.

The algorithm does not guarantee that a program will accept a full residency class of graduates, and it does not guarantee that a graduate will be matched into a residency program.

It should also be noted that the rounds and movement of applicants are blind to both programs and applicants. The applicants and programs aren’t privy to the movement and reassignments. The “rounds” are all done within a computer program. From the standpoint of the programs and the graduates, each submits a rank list with a complete list of preferences. The match is performed, and they are informed of the final result; no other information is given.

The National Residency Match: Why It Works

Regardless of which explanation one chooses to utilize, the key step is underlined. In essence, the underlined section describes that the algorithm seeks to make the most preferred match, not the match which happens first. We are more accustomed to thinking of matches like picking teams on a playground. Once the selection is made, the selection is final. The selection that happens first takes priority. In both scenarios above, a tentative match is made, but that match can be replaced with a more preferred match.

Stable and Unstable Matches

A related idea to the safe matches is a stable match. A stable match is created when there are no pairs which prefer each other rather than the results of the match. Imagine a matching program where candidates are matched to different branches of the military. There are recruits A, B, and C. A and B prefer the Army, Navy, and Air Force in that order. C prefers Navy, Air Force, and Army. All 3 branches prefer A, B, and C in that order. Each branch can only accept one recruit. Imagine that the match is carried out the following incorrect way:

Round 1:

A and B are tentatively assigned to the Army.

Since the Army preferences A, B will be reassigned. C is matched to Navy as his first choice.

Round 2:

A maintained his position with the Army.

C keeps his match with the Navy since he was the only recruit to match to the Navy in round 1.

B is therefore assigned to the Air Force.

The end result is that A is with the Army, C is with the Navy, and B is with the Air Force. This is considered an unstable match since B would prefer the Navy to the Air Force and the Navy would prefer B over C. Another way of recognizing an unstable match is if a pair would “make a deal” outside the match, then it is considered unstable. 

Note:  The above match was done poorly. In round 2, recruit B should have been assigned to the Navy as his second choice. Since the Navy prefers B over C, C should have been displaced from the Navy and been assigned to the Air Force. 

Requirements of a Sports Matching Market

A matching market system in professional sports would have to be more complex than the fictitious example of students applying to high school, or even the real-life example of the residency match. Among the factors to be considered:

  • Teams are built by players of different positions. This is fundamentally different from the examples of high school students or medical school graduates. In those examples, each person is part of only one category (student, resident, etc.). They are essentially interchangeable in terms of the slot he/she fills at the institution (school, hospital, etc.). Teams consist of quarterbacks, guards, relief pitchers, linebackers, etc. These are not interchangeable parts, and the matching system must allow for teams to select the correct proportion of each
  • Not only do teams have players of different positions, but some players complement each other differently. A quarterback who throws an exceptionally good long pass may need a speedy wide receiver for the deep routes. A quarterback who is an accurate short passer may have more need for a receiver out of the backfield. A quarterback who runs well may need an offensive guard who can pull and go downfield to block. A quarterback who is a good passer but not very mobile may need an exceptionally good left tackle. Thus, not only are positions different from each other, but the team needs to be built around the specific talents of each of the players. 
  • Teams need the opportunity to match virtually any player in the league available. This is a challenging aspect of the matching system. Each year, there are 1696 players who begin the year in the National Football League (53 players/team, 32 teams). Although there are some retirements, there are many more athletes to be considered in the form of rookies, practice squad members from the prior year, hopeful walk-ons, and athletes who were injured and now recovered. For the matching system to be successful, it must allow the opportunity to select virtually all of the 2000+ available athletes. It would be a severe drawback if a team could try to select 1 or 2 quarterbacks preferable to the team’s current quarterback before needing to reselect or lose the current quarterback. If there were 30+ quarterbacks that the team preferred, the team should have the opportunity to select any of those quarterbacks and still retain the possibility of their current quarterback. [Note: “Select” does not imply match. “Select” implies the preference of the team and a potential match if the algorithm favors that team.]
  • It is accepted that the players should not be paid the same salary. Although it can be debated how the pay scale should be proportioned, it is unlikely that anyone would seriously argue that everyone should be the same. A successful matching market system for professional sports needs to proportion the pay scale so that all of the players, from the highest paid to the lowest paid, receive appropriate compensation.
  • The movement of players from team to team needs to be balanced to achieve several goals.
  • The quality of the game needs to be optimized. Since players and coaches develop rhythms over years, the flow of players from team to team needs to be controlled so the quality of team play is the best that can be achieved.
  • The relationship of the players with the fan base needs to be maintained. Thus, players, especially the “star” players with whom the fans identify should not move excessively.
  • Athletes should maintain as much prerogative regarding which team/city whenever possible.  Clearly, a player cannot have infinite choice while player movement among teams is also controlled, but as much choice as possible should be retained by the players.

The Comprehensive Match

The Comprehensive Match is a structure where all tiers are selected simultaneously. Teams can make selections for any player at any tier.  All the players have numbers next to their names corresponding to the number of tiers. Each individual number would be color coded as green, red, blue, or gold. A player might be red Tier Three but green for Tier Two. This would imply the player in question has been selected at Tier Three by a team with higher priority or Tier Two with a lower priority.  All Tiers continue to be selected simultaneously until the Match has been completed. The Comprehensive Match requires that players submit a rank list with every team at every tier. Thus, if there is a league with 30 teams and 5 tiers, a player must submit a rank list with 150 choices. 

A small representation of the player list on the user interface is pictured below:  

Randy Thompson

1   2   3   4   5

Stephen McAllister

1   2   3   4   5

Theo Longstreet

1   2   3   4   5

Barry Franklin

1   2   3   4   5

There are two ways teams can select players:

  1. Highest Allowed: This is presumed to be the more common selection strategy. With this selection strategy, a player is selected to the highest tier in which a team has a vacancy. For example, if a team’s Tier One is full of blue and gold players, a team may select a player who would default to Tier Two. However, if one of the Tier One blue-status players is selected away, one of the Tier Two players (the first player selected in Tier Two)  automatically gets promoted to the vacant Tier One position. The rationale is to avoid the gamesmanship of trying to get a player at a lower salary, even if he is preferred. For example, imagine a team has a vacancy at Tier Two and Tier Three. The team wants to select Smith and Jones, and Smith is a higher priority for them. The team may feel that they can get Smith for less and select him for Tier Three so the team has a higher tiered choice for Jones. The result could be that Smith, although the preferred player, gets the lower salary.
  2. Single Tier Only: This method is more straightforward but less common. With selection strategy, a team will select a player at a single tier. If a player is selected at Tier Three, a team is stating that it is unwilling to expend a Tier Two or Tier One vacancy on that player. The advantage of this strategy is logistical. Teams can solidify some lower tier choices earlier in the match, which may help define some higher tier choices. However, the team can only select the player once for that tier.

A variation is a combination of the above, where a team selects a player at the highest available position, but places a limit on which tier to which the player can be promoted. For example, if the highest vacancy is at Tier Four, the team can select a player such that he can be promoted to Tier Three but not to Tiers One or Two. If a Tier One or Two player became available, a different choice would be utilized. 

The principle rationale for a Comprehensive Match is for player choice. A team may very well prefer to be playing for the Giants at Tier Two than for the Seahawks at Tier One. With a tier-by-tier matching system, there is no way to state that preference. A Comprehensive Match would allow a player to rank some lower tier choices with certain teams above higher-tiered choices with other teams.  

WHERE FREE AGENCY GOES WRONG

In Leagues with Hard Salary Caps

“Athletes should have the right to test their value in the free market.”

 There are two problems with the above statement. The first problem is that there is no consistent practice for unionized employees to individually negotiate salaries when the union participates in collective bargaining. Professional sports leagues are private businesses. Athletes are employees. There is no violation of rights for an employer to offer a job at a given salary. Changing the system in professional sports to a predetermined salary scale would represent a change in practice, but not a violation of rights. In fact, predetermined salaries are absolutely the norm in American industry. Firemen, teachers, machinists, nurses, janitors, and government workers are all hired into positions with established salary levels. The same is true for many highly paid employees, such as university faculty, physicians, and attorneys. 

The right to negotiate salaries does not even exist in professional sports leagues with free agency, and it is accepted. Individually negotiated salaries is a benefit given, by private contractual agreement, to veteran players with a given number of years of service. Players in their first few years in the league are not given that benefit. If negotiated salaries were truly a “right”, it could not be denied to players in the first, second, or third years in the league. One could argue that the benefit to individually negotiate salaries is an appropriate private agreement between athletes and teams. However, one cannot argue that it is a right, as if deciding against a system of individually negotiated salaries for veteran athletes  was against a fixed and absolute legal statute. Individually negotiated salaries for professional athletes is a private contractual agreement. It can be maintain

The second problem with that statement is that there is no free market. The labor market of a professional sports league, especially those with a salary cap, cannot pretend to resemble anything close to a free market. A free market requires that buyers and sellers enter and leave the market until there is an equilibrium between price and quantity. All major sports leagues have a fixed number of teams and a fixed number of players. The teams, buyers of labor in this case, virtually never enter or leave the market. Thus, the demand curve is vertical, fixed at a given quantity. In adverse circumstances, a team cannot decide to hire fewer players. A “down year” financially cannot be compensated by hiring fewer players or deciding that the team will forgo expensive quarterbacks in favor of less expensive tight ends. In a league with a salary cap, the total league salary is fixed at a certain level. The amount paid by a team is predetermined. The total salary and number of players have no opportunity for movement based on market forces. 

The fixed demand argument above can be described in a different way. In most industries, underperforming business entities fold. This is the Darwinian nature of the free market. The construct of a professional sports league is different. All teams are supposed to be viable and competitive for the league to be successful. Thus, the league should not be viewed as multiple businesses competing for labor in a free market, but rather multiple divisions of one large corporation.  These are markedly different assumptions from a typical free market.  

In reality, the presence of salary caps implies the lack of a free market has already been accepted. All four major professional sports leagues in the United States have salary caps of some fashion (hard cap, luxury tax). Market forces are not adequate to determine the equilibrium price and quantity of labor. This is not a criticism of the salary cap; a salary cap is the logical step in the salary structure of professional sports. The inconsistency is to accept a salary cap and then insist on the presence of individual salary negotiations in the spirit of the “free market.” 

Free Agency Failure: Risk, Dead Money, and Overpaid Players

  • The Consequence of Long-Term Contracts
  • The greatest argument against free agency is that it performs poorly. This assessment is not recognized or discussed since most never consider that an alternative exists. When looked at objectively, free agency should be considered a failure. Most of the failure revolves around the necessity for long-term contracts. It is true that in a free agency system, long-term contracts (defined as ≥2 seasons) are necessary. Without long-term contracts, players would be completely reshuffled every off-season. That chaos would be worse than the current downsides of long-term contracts. Long-term contracts, however, do have considerable downsides:
  • Risk to the team:
  • When signing a long-term contract, a team takes a substantial risk. If the athlete does not perform to expectations, the team is hampered for the duration of the contract. Even worse, this risk is largely self-fulfilling. Many players sign long-term contracts which give them financial independence and last until their best years are past them. Without a real financial incentive, not all players will remain motivated to maintain peak performance.
  • Dead money and overpaid players:
  • Dead money and overpaid players are different parts of the same spectrum. Dead money is produced when a player is cut from the roster with guaranteed money remaining on a contract. The team decides the money saved will get them a better player than if they kept the original player on the team. Dead money can be objectively calculated. If a player is not worth the value of the contract, but the team is better off keeping the player, the player remains on the team but is simply overpaid. The dollar amount of overpaid players cannot be objectively calculated; it depends on the estimated worth of the player in comparison to their contractual pay.
  • Dead money and overpaid players take away money from the productive players on the field. When the Broncos decided to cut Russell Wilson, the 2024 Denver Broncos will take a 38 million dollar pay cut.The Russell Wilson case is not a rare or isolated example. According to Spotrac.com, dead money has averaged over $600,000 per player per year for the past 3 years (assuming 53-man roster). In 2023, only 1 team had less than $10 million in dead cap (Cincinnati: $4.4 million). 13 teams had more than $40 million, topped by Tampa Bay’s $81 million. None of these figures accounts for money overpaid to players.
  • Every long-term contract is a separate gamble which cannot be won every time. The presidents, general managers, and capologists of NFL teams have that much less money to pay the rank-and-file players signed for the upcoming season. Every time a team official loses that gamble, there is a player at home that is getting money which should be going to players doing the work on the field. This is unjust, and players should be opposed.

The Ideal System from the Players Viewpoint

The benefit of a salary cap will not be disputed in this manuscript. In fact, a salary cap makes perfect sense and should be retained/instituted whenever possible. The disconnect is to implement a salary cap while utilizing a free labor market design for players. From the players’ perspective, the ideal system should distribute the money predictably and fairly. Given the salary cap, there should be defined boundaries as to the money the highest paid player receives, the lowest paid player receives, and everyone in-between. In other words, there should be a salary curve. The salary curve does not have to be exactly the same from team-to-team and from year-to-year, but it should be within reasonable limits.  Long-term contracts inevitably create dead money and overpaid players and thus are counter to the principle. The ideal system would eliminate dead money and pay players according to their true and current value.  

THE MATCH: THE WAY IT WORKS

Overview

The fundamental premise of this manuscript is that the free market conditions in professional team sports are highly altered and unsuitable to determine salaries and distribution of athletes in professional team sports. The concept of the Tiered Salary Structure is borne of 4 principles:

  • Salaries should be predetermined:

In the current free agent system, teams select desired athletes, and the two parties meet to consider an agreement, including salary levels. This process should be reversed. Salary levels should be predetermined by collective bargaining, as they are in virtually every other unionized industry. Athletes are then assigned to teams by a selection process with the more sought-after athletes obtaining the higher, predetermined salaries.

  • Teams should have the opportunity to keep their core athletes:

Both for optimal athletic performance and the relationship of the athletes with the fan base, the ideal salary system would allow teams to reliably keep their “core,” or most important, players.

  • Salaries should be organized into tiers:

Because it is necessary to keep an entire core group of valuable players, the top salary must be organized on a level or tier. It becomes impractical to keep that core group while paying them different salaries (exclusive of post-season incentives). The same practice should be true regarding different levels of supporting players, creating an entire salary structure of levels, or tiers. Tier One is defined as the highest-paying tier.

  • Players should be distributed to teams in a matching market:

A matching market is better suited than individual negotiations when total salary and the number of players are both fixed. A matching mechanism can make the market safe (minimal “gamesmanship”) and yield stable matches (avoiding the temptation for backroom deals).  

The Tiered Salary System calls for salaries, throughout the entire pay scale, to be predetermined by collective negotiation. This, in fact, is the more familiar system within American industry where most employees obtain jobs that offer a certain pre-set salary or salary range. Salaries should be determined collectively by the owners and the players, and the players are selected into those predetermined salary positions. As mentioned above, those salary positions should be grouped into levels, or tiers. The number of tiers and the number of athletes per tier is negotiable, although 8 players for football, 5 players for baseball, and 3 players for basketball are likely numbers for Tier One (the athletic core). There would be a temptation to identify a small number of “superstar” players who deserve a higher salary than the rest of the core Tier One players. It can be argued successfully that bona fide stars (e.g., an All-Pro quarterback) deserve higher salaries than the 8th best player on a team. The Tiered Salary System, at first glance, would pay the best player in the NFL the same as the 256th best player (assuming 8 players on Tier One). However, as stated in the prior paragraph, it becomes unrealistic to resolve this dilemma by identifying 1 or 2 players in the preseason who deserve a higher salary than the rest of the core group. The true stars should be paid a higher salary and can be paid a higher salary within the Tiered Salary System. The answer to the dilemma is to provide the extra salary in the form of incentive payments at the end of the season rather than establishing a higher salary in the preseason. This is further discussed in the section on the “Superstar Bonus.” 

There are some philosophical guidelines which can be used to create the number and size of tiers. Tier One (the highest tier) contains the aforementioned “core” group of athletes. The second tier would likely represent the majority of starters not in the first tier. The third tier should represent the remaining starters and important role players. The fourth tier would consist of regular substitutes, and the fifth tier would largely consist of reserves. Different sports can have different numbers of tiers, largely depending on roster size. A baseball team may have 5 tiers of 5 players each (one tier would need 6 players). Basketball teams would likely have 3 or 4 tiers with 3 or 4 players in each tier. Football, because of the larger number of athletes may have 5-7 tiers. Tiers can have different numbers of players, and a league may choose to change the number of tiers or the number of players per tier between seasons.

Each team in a professional sports league would have the same tier structure and the same salary at each tier. The salary burden for each team would be identical, as is already true for leagues with hard salary caps. Athletes are assigned to teams annually according to an allocation process. To distinguish this from the amateur draft, this allocation process is referred to as the Match. The Match dictates that all athletes undergo a bidding process in the off-season, with the athlete assigned to the team which offers the athlete the highest possible salary.  The Match takes place at a convention (a physical place or a virtual convention) with each team listing its choices in rounds as the players eventually get selected.

The Match

The Match is the allocation process by which players are assigned to teams. Every player participates in the Match, and the Match takes place every year.  Despite every player going through the Match every year, the Match is constructed so that roster stability will be maintained. Player movement will be limited and ordered.

A brief glossary of terms is helpful:

Vacancy

A player slot or position on a team’s tier which is to be filled in the Match. The number of vacancies on all tiers adds up to the number of players on the team. 

Select (Selection)

An act by a team which identifies a player the team hopes to match

  • Synonym: to offer a contract to a player

Assign (Assignment)

Implies a “temporary match.” A player “assigned” to a team within the matching process may eventually match with that team or may be prioritized away to another team.

Match

Implies a permanent assignment of a player to a team (“permanent” meaning for the upcoming season).

Rank Order

A list of teams generated by each player which lists all the teams in his order of preference

Current Team

The team for whom a player played in the season which just ended.

Prioritize

(Prioritize Away)

This occurs when a player is selected and assigned to a team but is subsequently re-assigned to another team with a higher priority.  

Basic Rules

The Match is a computer mediated process. The actual Match is an active process for the team and a passive process for the athlete. In other words, the team makes decisions and performs selections in real time during the matching process. The athlete submits a Rank Order prior to the start of the Match. Once that Rank Order is submitted, the athlete takes no further action and simply awaits the results of the Match.

  • The Match takes place annually; all contracts are for one season.
  • When a team selects an athlete, it is binding.
  • a It cannot be refused by the player.
  • b It cannot be rescinded by the team.
  • Athletes are obliged to accept the highest tier contract offered to them.
  • If more than one team offers an athlete a contract at the same tier and one of the teams is the athlete’s current team, the athlete must accept the contract from his current team.
  • The “current team” is defined as the team for which the athlete played during the season which just concluded.
  • If more than one team offers an athlete a contract at the same tier and none of the teams is his current team, the athlete’s preferences determine which team to which he is assigned. The athlete’s preferences are on his Rank Order.
  • Rookies are all given lowest tier contracts (other options are discussed in a subsequent section).

Each time has the number of vacancies corresponding to the number of players on that tier. All teams have lists of players corresponding to ones that are available to select, unavailable to select, or have been selected. The choices are best understood using a color-coded system:

GREEN

indicates players available for selection.  A green color does not distinguish players who have not been selected at all versus players who have been selected by a team with lower priority. Either way, it is available for selection by the team in question.

RED

indicates players unavailable for selection. The red color does not distinguish between players who were selected by a higher priority team in that tier versus players who were initially selected in a higher tier.

BLUE

indicates players assigned to a team, but not yet matched. The blue color designation means that there is another team with a higher priority who could potentially prioritize that player away.

GOLD

indicates a player who is matched. The player will be playing for that team for the upcoming season. There are two ways a player can become gold:

  • The player becomes gold if his current team selects him. There is no higher priority than the current team at a given tier; selection by the current team will result in the player being matched.
  • A player can be selected with blue status, meaning there are higher priority teams that could potentially select him. If the vacancies of the higher priority teams become filled with other choices, the player can no longer be prioritized away and turns from blue to gold.

The highest priority in the selection process is when a current team selects one of their own players in Tier One. Thus, all teams are assured of retaining as many players as they have Tier One positions, if they choose to use their vacancies for their own players. Thus, teams have the option of keeping current players at Tier One indefinitely. 

Simultaneous Selections:

The simultaneous selection process calls for teams to make choices continually and independently while other teams make selections. Players who have been selected are blue as long as there are other teams with a higher priority for that player. Higher priority teams will still see that player as green on its user interface. Lower priority teams will see that player as red. When a player has been selected, and no higher priority teams have vacancies, the player becomes matched to the team that had selected him. The simultaneous selection is a critical contribution to the Tiered Salary System. It cannot be overemphasized that simultaneous selections are what allows the matching system to be practical for professional sports.

Completion of Tier Selection:

When all the vacancies have been filled with blue and gold selections, no team can do any more selections. Selection could be termed to be in a final gridlock. At this point, all blue players turn gold, and the selection for that tier becomes complete.

The Match: Overall Sequence

The Match is performed one tier at a time. Tier One is matched first. By selecting the tiers from highest to lowest, players matched will receive the highest salary possible since the higher salaries are matched first. Subsequent tiers are performed in turn. The sequence of the Tier-By-Tier Match is as follows: 

  • Prior to the Match for Tier One, each athlete submits his Rank Order, listing the teams in the league in order of his preference.
  • Teams create their own lists and algorithms for their desired athletes in advance of the tier selection. At time zero, the Match for Tier One begins. Each team must submit its initial selection for Tier One.
  • There is no need for a team to be realistic about the odds of matching these athletes. A team’s selections can constitute the very best athletes in the entire league.
  • For athletes selected by more than one team:
  • a Current teams hold highest priority
  • b Higher position on the player’s Rank Order is the next priority. It is possible to leave some teams off the Rank Order if the player would rather not be in the league rather than play for a given team. Those teams would see the player status as “Red” from the beginning of the selection process.
  • If a team has a vacancy, the team must submit a subsequent choice within a short period of time. This is called a submission interval. The length of the submission interval is by consensus between owners and players.
  • Teams may make choices much more rapidly than the submission interval; the submission interval is the maximum time between choices. A team may make choices very rapidly and make dozens of choices during the tier selection.
  • When all vacancies are filled, selections cease and Tier One is complete.
  • The process is completed for the second and all subsequent tiers.

TIMELINE

The Match occurs in the middle of the offseason, after teams have had an opportunity to hold workouts or combines to evaluate players. The Match also occurs after the amateur draft, so teams have a chance to select rookie players. The Match is performed enough in advance of the preseason that there is time to arrange pre-season camps with the newly-selected players.

During the actual match, Tier One is selected first. After Tier One is complete, Tier Two selection commences. A break between tier selections is expected. Any amount of time can be granted to allow teams to reorganize their choices based on the results of the last tier. After Tier Two selection is complete, Tier Three and all subsequent tiers are selected in turn.   

Within a given tier, teams should be required to submit selections within a regular maximum time interval (selection intervals). This allows the pace of the selection process to be maintained. It is an option for teams to be able to call a certain number of timeouts if more time is needed prior to a critical selection decision. 

ROOKIES, TRADES, PRACTICE SQUADS

The details of trades, practice squads, and injury replacements can change significantly without altering the fundamental benefit of the Tiered Salary System. There is certainly a good deal of latitude which can be employed for these issues. However, a good starting point will be described.

Rookies

When rookies are drafted in the amateur draft, they are not truly selected to be on the team. What is selected is “current team” status. Once selected in the amateur draft, the team who drafted the rookie has priority when selecting that player over all other teams within the tier. If the team which selected the player decides to place priorities with other players, the team is not obliged to select the player in the Match.

The ideal construct is for rookies to be selected only in the bottom tier. In this way, teams can have one year of a player being in the professional leagues to assess the player’s skills before the young player displaces a veteran. Otherwise, rookies that have great potential will be selected in the top tiers. Teams will gamble as to a rookie’s true worth. Overall, it is a safer system to have the rookie get a bottom-tiered salary for one season. After that, the rookie can get any tiered salary a team is willing to pay.

A variation could be to employ a graduated system. Imagine a league with five tiers. Rookies might be limited to Tier Five. Second-year players might be selected as high as Tier Three, and third year players may be selected in Tier One. These nuances of the salary system can be conformed to suit the preferences of the league and players.

Trades

The Tiered Salary System is admittedly not user friendly for trades during the season. During the off-season, trades are straightforward. Teams can trade whatever combination of players they choose. “Current team” status is what is actually traded. 4 players can be traded for 1 player. Tier One/Two players can be traded for Tier Three/Four. Any combination of players which the teams want to trade can occur. A trade, of course, does not guarantee the team receiving the player will choose to select the player in the Match. Even if the team receiving the player selects the team, it does not mean the team will definitely match the player unless the team selects the player in Tier One. There is also nothing illogical about trading a Tier One for a Tier Two (or lower tier) player. A team may have priority on a Tier One player whom it doesn’t plan on selecting during Tier One the following year. That team may also feel that another team will select that player during Tier One, which means that player will be lost to the team. The team may improve itself at Tier Two by trading their Tier One player for a Tier Two player who represents an improvement on their Tier Two players.

Trades during the year after the Match are more problematic. In theory, there should be no problem about trading players at the same tier. A Tier Two player can be traded for another Tier Two player. The salary burden remains unchanged. However, trading in between tiers becomes more difficult. A potential resolution to this may be possible, but the Tiered Salary System does not, as the time of this writing, allow post-Match trading of players at different Tier levels. However, there is nothing compelling the system to necessarily allow trades, either. It would be very appropriate for leagues to simply not allow trades, and teams need to focus on using the players they have selected rather than trying to expend energy on changing their rosters mid-season.

Practice Squads

Practice squads have a crucial role in the Tiered Salary System. Practice squads are, in effect, the reserves for each team. Injuries, unexpectedly poor play, and suspensions for violation of team/league rules are all realities of professional sports. Any of those circumstances can lead to open positions on a team which need to be filled. Practice squads allow promotion to fill these vacancies.

The creation of practice squads can be formed as an additional Tier. After the “last” tier of regulars has been selected, an additional tier for the practice squad can be undertaken. The size of the practice squad should be sufficient that it is unlikely a team would have to draw on players outside the practice squad to fill vacancies.

The more difficult question is what happens to the salary of an athlete who is demoted from the team in favor of someone from the practice squad. Solutions can differ depending on whether the reason for the demotion is injury, rules violations, or poor play. There is a disincentive to distinguish between those causes since it would promote false reporting by the team. The most sensible approach is to not change the salary at all except for a rules violation. Players promoted from the practice squad will still receive practice squad pay, but they will get a chance to show their play in game situations, increasing their chances for matching to the regular team for the following year. Players demoted will still be paid for that year based on the salary of their tier onto which they matched, but face declining likelihood of maintaining their salaries for the following year. Another formula could be dividing base pay and game pay. For example, imagine a league where the bottom regular tier paid $500,000 and the practice squad paid $75,000. Each team in the league played 20 games/year. The “base pay” of the bottom tier could be $300,000 plus $10,000/game. Thus, if a player on the bottom squad were demoted after 5 games, his salary would be $350,000 for the year, and the practice squad player promoted would get $225,000 for the year. This certainly is amenable to some formula changes depending on the preferences of the league and the players’ union.

It is also a league-specific issue about whether players can freely be promoted or demoted to and from the practice squad during the season due to one of the reasons stated above. As a guiding philosophy, the Tiered Salary System allows for re-evaluation for players annually with their pay and status readjusted appropriately every year. It is problematic if adjustments/promotions/demotions take place during the middle of the year. This still represents a much more accurate system for player re-evaluation than the free agency system, where teams make commitments many years into the future based on anticipated performance. The freedom to promote/demote to and from the practice squad will be guided by the preferences and demands of that particular league at issue.

It would be possible to have a functional Tiered Salary System without practice squads. Injuries/demotions can be filled by players who are simply unsigned. Practice squads have advantages, since those players may practice with the team and become incorporated with the system, so substituting for a regular player will be more fluid. It also gives a cohort of players a living wage so there is more availability of ready players for next year’s Match. However, bringing in unsigned players is a possibility.

THE SUPERSTAR BONUS

The Tiered Salary System cannot be judged without the adjustments that can be made to players’ salaries using post-season incentive payments.

At face value, the Tiered Salary System would pay the same salary to each player on any tier, including the star players on Tier One. True superstars often justify a higher salary than would each of 6-8 players encompassing the entire Tier One. Creating a special “Superstar Tier One” with only 1-2 players would leave many core players on the fringe between the “Superstar Tier One” and Tier Two. Teams would have difficulty retaining those core players. A better answer is to employ post-season incentive payments to appropriately compensate deserving players. In this way, superstar players can get additional pay. However, the entire 6-8 player “core” can be preserved in the selection process.

The Superstar Bonus is created by taking money out of the ordinary pay scale and repaying that money back to deserving players at the end of the season. Imagine a 53-player NFL team with 6 tiers; each team has 8 players on Tiers One-Five and 13 players on Tier Six. The salary cap is $200,000,000 per team. The table below uses the ratio of 12:8:5:3:2:1 to create a pay scale:

Tier

No Superstar Bonus

$20M Superstar Bonus

$40M Superstar Bonus

$9,523,809

$8,571,428

$7,619,047

$6,349,206

$5,714,285

$5,079,365

$3,958,253

$3,562,427

$3,166,602

$2,380,952

$2,142,856

$1,904,761

$1,587,302

$1,428,571

$1,269,841

$793,651

$714,286

$634,921

Total Base Salary

$200,000,000

$180,000,000

$160,000,000

Superstar Bonus

/

$20,000,000

$40,000,000

Total Salary

$200,000,000

$200,000,000

$200,000,000

The column labeled “No Superstar Bonus” was calculated using all $200M toward the regular pay scale. If $20M were set aside, the pay scale would be reduced per the column labeled “$20M Superstar Bonus.” In other words, salaries would be created using $180M for the regular salary scale. The right-hand column was calculated assuming a $40M bonus, using $160M to create the regular pay scale. In the $20M or $40M Superstar Bonus scenarios, that amount of money could be used to augment the salaries of deserving players. 

The Superstar Bonus can be paid out using virtually any parameters: vote of an impartial panel, fan voting, All-Pro selections, leadership in statistical categories, etc. This would allow superstars to be paid without disrupting the athletic core of Tier One. Payouts can be spread out among a relatively large number of players or focused on a small number. If one feels the better players in the NFL should be paid $25M/year, $35M/year, or even $100M/year, enough money can be set aside from the regular salary cap to make those elite salaries possible. If one feels quarterbacks should get more than other positions, which is the current reality in free agency, bonus money can be set aside for those players.

There is also tremendous latitude in how the money is set aside from the salary cap in order to fund the Superstar Bonus. Money can be set aside proportionately from all players, as is demonstrated in the table above. One could also set aside money from only the top tier(s) to redistribute that money among a few players within those tiers. In that scenario, the salaries of the bottom tiers would not be affected. 

The superstar bonus does not have to be paid out to each team equally. It can be distributed based on league MVP’s, statistical leaders, and All-Pro selections.  Regardless of how the Superstar Bonus is configured, there are several features which are consistent: 

The Superstar Bonus configuration does not change the selection/distribution process which determines which players match to which teams. The Superstar Bonus does not change the overall Salary Cap figure.

FINANCIAL SECURITY

Long-term contracts may sound favorable because of the financial security it offers, but players shouldn’t like them. It hurts more than it helps. Long-term contracts are great for the few that get them. The problem is that a huge portion of money paid long-term contracts results in dead money and overpaid players. The vast majority of players receive lower salaries so teams can pay their dead money debt, yet those players receive none of the benefits of long-term contracts. Thus, long-term contracts help a few players greatly at a significant cost to the majority.

The reality is that the same dollar cannot be put into two different buckets at the same time. If players want a dollar reserved for their future, it must be deducted from the present. Any form of group injury insurance is flawed in that there is no perfect formula which will guarantee that payouts will be given to the most deserving players in proper proportions. The reality is that it is better to pay players up front, as they play, then for the league, or some other third party, to set aside money for the future. If players want to set money aside, they should do it themselves. In this way, every dollar that each player sets aside for his own future is a dollar that player is certain to get.

A Better Answer for Financial Security: Severance Pay

One can make the strong argument that athletes are better off receiving all their money in the form of salary rather than have large portions set aside as financial security, since that financial security money will not be distributed perfectly. However, professional athletes do live with uncertainty due to injuries. A better answer for the players would be to institute severance pay.

Severance pay is a predictable payout given to every player upon leaving the league. It should not be considered long-term financial security. It is not intended as a life-long salary. However, for players who are cut or injured unexpectedly, severance pay is transition money to help players settle into post-playing days. The general formula will be that players will get at least one-quarter of their best annual salary. The more years played, the closer players will get towards one-half of their best annual salary. There would be an upper limit, which would probably be about one million dollars. With this limited payout, severance pay will not be a huge fraction of the salary cap, but it would mean that players would get an absolute minimum of $175,000 upon leaving the league. This is money for players to move, pay down payments, and have a few months’ living expenses as they settle into their new careers.

A suggested formula for severance pay is: maximum salary multiplied by [2n-1/4n], where n equals the number of years played. For players who only played one year, the multiplier is ¼. For players with many years of service to the league, the multiplier approaches ½. Severance pay should have an upper limit, which is suggested to be $1 million. 

Assuming average severance pay is $500,000 and 500 players receive it each year (between ⅓ and ¼ of the total number of players in the league), the total severance payout would be $250 million. This is about 3% of the entire salary cap. This is far less than dead money and much more fairly distributed. 

Severance pay is given to everyone regardless of the reason for leaving the league, although players can only get it once. The reason to avoid specific “injury insurance” is the difficulty in determining which players leave the league due to injury. Some players will be determined to recover from an injury; others will not. Some players suffer a minor injury, but that is enough to end their careers as their talent level just barely kept them playing when perfectly healthy. Adjudicating the spectrum of situations would be impossible. It is better to take a “no-fault” approach but giving everyone one payout in a career.

WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES

Almost everyone benefits from the Tiered Salary System. The most important benefit is that the Tiered Salary System will produce a better game. Player movement among teams will be based on frequent (annual) athletic assessments, not the timing of free agent contracts. Team chemistry and productivity will not be affected by players whose value fails to withstand the duration of their multi-year contracts. A better game should translate to more success for everyone in the industry.

 Everyone will benefit from greater stability of player movement. In a system which calls for every player to be reselected every year, it may seem counterintuitive to claim that stability of movement will be improved. The Tiered Salary System depends on year-to-year consistency of team and player preferences to maintain stability, termed “selection gridlock.” In the Tiered Salary System, Tier One selection by a player’s current team carries the highest priority. Teams will use this priority to maintain the very best players in the league. The Chiefs will retain Patrick Mahomes, the 49ers will retain Nick Bosa, and the Vikings will retain Justin Jefferson. Players will only change teams when their athletic status changes, causing a team to forgo a Tier One player from the prior year in favor of a player promoted from a lower tier. Very often, that will be a player completing his rookie year who has proved his worth. Mid-lower tier players will also have stability, more from familiarity with a team’s system, work ethic, and a positive personality. This will provide greater and more logical stability than multi-year free agency contracts.

Fans

Fans will specifically benefit because their relationships with favorite players will not be jeopardized by free agency movements. Favorite star players will only change teams when their current team no longer wishes to use a Tier One selection for them. In addition, the discrete elements which make up the Tiered Salary System will be more user-friendly for fans to follow than the complex intricacies of free agency contracts. Fans can better understand the strategy of selecting a player at Tier Two vs. Tier Three as opposed to complex contracts with variable guaranteed vs. non-guaranteed income, cap space calculations over the next 4-5 years, opt-out clauses, etc. The Match itself can become an event with enormous enthusiasm and engagement; the Match could dwarf the amateur draft in terms of fan interest.

Owners/Teams

The owners are not the biggest beneficiaries of the Tiered Salary System, but their benefit is the easiest to understand. Owners will benefit from risk mitigation. The fate of a team is significantly affected for years from an expensive free agency signing. A good multi-year contract, even if expensive, can produce results and stability for a team. A bad multi-year contract, one in which the player doesn’t produce good results on the field, results in years of liability. Decisions in the Tiered Salary System don’t have the multi-year impact like big free agency contracts. Selections that do not produce expected results can be rectified in the following Match. In addition, the number of front office staff required for financial, legal, and negotiating functions is likely to be streamlined.  

Players

Players will benefit immensely from the Tiered Salary System, though less obviously than for owners. Players will benefit from more equitable distribution of fixed salary cap dollars. In a salary cap environment, the players should desire 2 important features from the salary system:

  • appropriate distribution: Appropriate distribution refers to the way the money is distributed from the highest paid, through the average paid, and down to the lowest paid players. In other words, players should want a salary curve which distributes the fixed salary dollars in a reasonable way among all the players.
  • fair distribution: Fair distribution refers to how reliable the best players get the most money. An unfair distribution would have mediocre players getting high salaries, and many highly productive players getting mediocre salaries.  The best situation for players in a salary cap league is for there to be a true correlation between pay and performance.

The Tiered Salary System

WHO WINS

Individual players can always desire an exceptionally large salary guaranteed for a long period of time. However, if one is creating a system that is best for all the players as a group, appropriate and fair distribution is what should be desired. 

Active players suffer a significant salary reduction from dead money, which is a systematic drain on the effective salary allotment. Dead money can be quantified. The salary reduction is exacerbated by players who are still active on the team but are overpaid. Dollars overpaid to players still retained by their team is difficult to quantify. A player has control over his performance level. A player has no control over free agent contracts given to other players which drain money from his team’s cap space.  

Players will also not have their salaries dependent on their own business acumen or the input of their advisors. Salaries are at fixed levels. Most of the terms of everyone’s contract will be the same, and contracts among players at specific tiers will be identical. These standardized contracts will be vetted by the union, so players should be able to rely on the contracts having acceptable terms. Individual players will no longer be dependent on negotiating strategy, hold-outs, the correct contract terms, etc. Players will be able to focus on athletics, knowing the tier selection process will give them the highest salary possible based on their performance. In addition, agents will not be necessary, which will save the agent fees that come with it. Agents ordinarily provide two services to players: opening lines of communication with teams and negotiating contracts. In the Tiered Salary System, these functions are embedded.

True superstars will do very well in the Tiered Salary System. It is true that superstars will no longer be able to obtain the multi-year guaranteed contracts available in free agency. There is no equivalent to that situation in the Tiered Salary System. Although their salaries will not be guaranteed for years at a time as with free agency, they will still be very well paid while they receive Tier One salaries for many years. Star players will also benefit from being able to obtain maximum (Tier One) salaries starting their second year in the league instead, of the 4-6 year wait for salaries to peak in free agency. Therefore, even if peak salaries may be lower, career salaries are likely to be similar.

The Tiered Salary System

WHO LOSES

There are two groups of people who will not benefit from the Tiered Salary System: agents and overpaid players. The biggest losers are the agents, as agents are simply not required. Agents perform two functions for players: they facilitate contact between teams and players, and they help negotiate contracts. Neither of these functions will be required. Agents will still be necessary for endorsements and other commercial opportunities but not for negotiating salaries. 

Overpaid players and players receiving significant amounts of dead money will lose from the Tiered Salary System. Individual players become “overpaid” for a variety of circumstances. Some have legitimate nagging injuries that affect performance despite best efforts. Some become less motivated as they achieve financial security. Some have coaching/personnel changes around them which hinder their opportunities. Whatever the reason, players will no longer receive large amounts of money based on their perceived athletic value from two, three, four, or five years prior.

Answers to anticipated questions critics would have about the Tiered Salary System

The Tiered Salary System is meant to work with a salary cap. As with all other parts of the website, a hard salary cap is assumed.

Everyone wants security.  Everyone would like financial reserves that will satisfy their needs for the rest of their lives. In a sports league, long-term contracts are wonderful for the athletes who get them but terrible for the ones who don’t. To put this in perspective, think of a disability policy. Someone gets a disability policy to make sure he/she keeps an income stream if sick or injured. In the regular world, the person who pays the premium is the one who would potentially benefit from policy. In the sports world, long-term contracts bring financial security to those who have it, but long-term contracts result in dead money. Dead money simply cannot be avoided. The dead money is paid by everyone in the form of lower salaries, particularly by the rank-and-file athletes. However, those rank-and-file athletes whose salary is lowered hardly ever get long-term contracts themselves. In other words, long-term contracts in professional sports are like a disability policy in which one group pays the premiums, and another group gets the benefits. The people who get the free disability policy may love that situation, but no one should think that it is just or desirable.

The latter part of the previous statement has some element of truth. The Tiered Salary System does limit the salaries of players. The first part of the statement is not true; the Tiered Salary System is more fair to players than free agency. To reiterate, the discussion is focused on leagues with a salary cap. Given a salary cap, the total amount of salary allowed each team is fixed. With that assumption, players should want that fixed amount of money to be fairly distributed among the players. Players, as a whole, would not want a system that paid mediocre players as much as elite players. However, they also would not want a system that gives the huge majority of money to a couple of players, while the rest of the team only received a small fraction of the total salary cap. The Tiered Salary System allows the players to have more control over how salary is allocated among the players, from the most to the least valuable player on the roster.

Even people who are staunch free market advocates recognize there are some markets where the typical supply/demand forces do not work well. The problem with the labor market in professional sports is that the market itself is highly constrained. This does not imply the constraints should be lifted. The labor market for athletes in professional sports should be constrained. The argument is that a free market design does not work well in a constrained market. If free market forces were to be used, teams should be able to freely enter and leave the league, and each team should retain as many players as they please. For example, no one regulates the number of actors a producer can hire when making a movie, and there areno fixed number of movies made each year. Any studio can start-up or close its doors, and each studio can make as many or as few movies as it likes. Professional sports leagues are different. Sports leagues have a fixed number of teams (rarely are teams added/subtracted and only after a long vetting process), and each team has a fixed number of players. The entire supply/demand equation is distorted.

There is no law preventing a private business from offering a job at a salary predetermined by the employer. In fact, it is by far the norm. The entire government, including the military, is based on predetermined salary levels. In fact, predetermined salaries are already well accepted in the sports world. Rookies don’t have the privilege of individually negotiating salaries (free agency) in the NFL. In major league baseball, 6 years of service is required before unrestricted free agency.  It is perfectly permissible for a private business to grant certain contractual agreements based on years of service, but there are no legal rights  which are granted to veteran athletes that aren’t granted to rookies. Congress, or any state legislative body, has never created a law which allows for individually negotiated salaries for only employees with more than 4-6 years of service. If rookie salaries can be fixed by contractual agreement, so can veteran players. This line of reasoning, as a stand-alone argument, does not imply that veteran salaries must be  fixed. It simply states that salaries fixed by the employer, and agreed by the union via collective bargaining, break no laws or any accepted standard of labor practice.

The issues of a collegiate match are substantially different from the Tiered Salary System for Professional Sports. It is reasonable to assign professional athletes to a team/city based on the needs of the league as long as the salary is maximized. The growth and development of the professional athlete is less of a consideration. The professional athlete is an employee playing his/her part in supporting the industry. In a collegiate match, young people are not simply choosing a football team. They are choosing a school in which to continue their education and their development into independent adulthood. The academic offerings and the nature of the environment are of necessary importance. One can reasonably tell a professional athlete that he will play in Denver when he wants to play on the East Coast, because that is where the NFL needs him. One cannot, or should not, tell a college student he must go to school at Iowa State instead of Tennessee because that’s where the NCAA needs him.

Benefits of a Collegiate Match

There are two principle benefits of a collegiate match:

  • Organizational:

Currently, the process of recruiting includes a long period of commitment and decommitment. 

Athletes and coaching staffs must find each other through a variety of disconnected and haphazard interpersonal networks. A matching system would organize the process for the benefit of all. Every program would be working on a similar timeline. Recruiting could be organized into conference-wide or region-wide conventions, so athletes and programs would have greater access to each other. Communication, knowledge, and opportunity would be more methodical and less haphazard.

  • Less dependency on individual negotiations or conditions:

This is a strong feature of a match which might be viewed as an advantage by some and a disadvantage by others. In a matching system, there is not the opportunity for  players and teams to negotiate with each other such that a commitment is based those individually negotiated conditions. These individually negotiated conditions could include playing time, the recruitment of other athletes, the style of play, or allowances for academic performance. It could also include individually negotiated NIL payments.

In a matching system, athletes submit rank lists before the Match. Those rank lists are final before the teams select real-time during the Match. Although there is some opportunity for athletes to rank programs based on individual promises, it is much harder for programs to offer such promises since the results of the match are hard to predict. If one expects to match 4 out of 30 or 40 possibilities, it would be difficult for all 30 or 40 of those potential recruits to all have firm promises of playing time. This rationale holds for any individually negotiated condition, including financial recruiting incentives.

The Structure of a Collegiate Match

The collegiate match would be a single-tiered match. It would be structured like any single tier of the professional match. Players would submit their rank lists, and then teams select real-time using the computer interface. A multi-tiered collegiate match would be problematic. If structured like a professional match, it would mean that a player would be obligated to go to a mediocre football school on a Tier One scholarship rather than go to Alabama or Ohio State on a Tier Two scholarship.

The impact of that structure would have an unacceptable impact. It would be possible to have a multi-tiered match, but would need to be a Comprehensive Match. While solving the above issue, a Comprehensive Match is more complex. The matching system would have to deal with thousands of high school seniors each year who would all need to learn the intricacies of the Comprehensive Match. A single-tiered match is much more likely to be successful.

The Collegiate Match and the Numbers

The scope of the collegiate match is another issue which is simultaneously an advantage and an obstacle. For both schools and players, many more choices will need to be evaluated if a matching system is used.

In the current system of commitment by individual negotiation, teams and players can each target a small number of favored choices. If an agreement can be reached, then a commitment is made that is low-cost in terms of time, money, and inconvenience. The results of a matching system are hard to predict. Therefore, both schools and players need to evaluate enough possibilities so they are unlikely to have empty spots (for schools) or go unmatched (for players). If schools and players had to evaluate these large numbers in the current system, the burden would be too great. A matching system would necessitate “conventions” where large numbers of schools and players meet at a site where both can evaluate each other more easily in greater numbers. This would result in more choices for everyone, but everyone would need to go through the process of evaluating multiple possibilities.

It would be possible for schools to have unfilled vacancies after selecting all of the athletes they have formally evaluated. Likewise, it would be possible for a player to be unmatched if they only ranked the programs with which they had formal interviews. This problem is addressed by schools selecting players based on scouting reports only and players ranking schools based on reputation and other available sources of information. For both schools and players, the number of evaluations is based on judgment of sufficient numbers to avoid empty vacancies or going unmatched. However, the back-up plan is to rank a large number of choices not formally evaluated. 

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