So here's a column at ESPN.com, wherein Frank Hughes claims that the league should institute a rule disallowing guaranteed contracts longer than three years. Frank, are you high?

He makes the usual comments about "in no other profession are people paid on potential" and so forth. Well, Frank, sports are different, in case you hadn't noticed. In no other profession is there a collective trying to make money by having different pieces of that collective compete against each other, either.

Hughes completely dismisses Ray Allen's (correct) argument that "owners have to be smarter" by saying "Owners have never been smart; they need rules to be smart for them." Why should the players suffer for owners not being smart? If the chair of the math department at Harvard offers me a guaranteed five year contract at $100,000 a year to teach there, who am I to turn it down? Should I say, "No, sir, I don't think I'm worth the risk.
In fact, there should be rules against that kind of thing."

It would be nice if all sportswriters weren't crotchety old conservatives who think unions are Satanic societies.