Mike Florio, the chief analyst at NBC’s Pro Football Talk, recently insisted that the NFL Draft is thoroughly un-American, but he also knows that no one is listening to him.
In fact, he thinks all sports league drafts are un-American. Florio contends that pro sports are the only employment sector where the employers decide who works where instead of one where the employees choose.
Florio insists that most employees decide where they want to work. They choose the town or region of the country they want to live in, apply for jobs in those areas, and work where they want to work. But in sports drafts, the employer controls all that and forces the employee to move to another city to work.
For instance, the NFL may draft a player who was born and raised in Sarasota, Florida, but force him to move to Seattle to play for the Seahawks. But Florio says that a young man from Sarasota should be able to pick the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to play for and avoid having to uproot his life, travel across the entire country, and be forced to live in Washington State.
“The draft reflects Anti-American values. According to Awful Announcing, it restrains movement and flexibility and the inherent realities of self-determination,” Florio said. “It forces men not long removed from being boys to move to places they otherwise would never choose to live, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from the places they’d prefer to start their professional lives.
Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow reacts to his #1 selection in the 2020 NFL Draft (Getty Images)
“It really is un-American,” Florio continued. “There is no industry other than professional sports where someone who enters a workforce cannot pick where they are going to live, cannot pick who they’re going to work for, cannot pick who they’re going to work with. They just have to submit.”
Perhaps Florio sort of has a point, though he is wrong to say that sports are the only sector where the employer decides where employees work. Police and fire chiefs usually have to uproot their lives to find a chief’s job. CEOs often do, too, as do salesmen. In each of those cases, the employer tells the employee where he must live to work regardless of where he lives upon application. And who can forget the military? Few soldiers get to pick the town they want to work in, especially if they intend to climb the officer ranks. Are all those jobs un-American, too?
What about NFL coaches? They certainly don’t have the option of picking the NFL team playing in the backyard of their hometown. It could also be argued that the players are choosing their employer. Their employer is the NFL. No, they can’t select the franchise they want to go to, but the players choose to become employees of the National Football League.
Also, where are American workers guaranteed the right to choose where they work?
The sports analyst claims that he bases his opinion on his years as a labor lawyer from the days before he became a sports analyst.
Florio also claims that everyone is “brainwashed” into accepting the draft.
“The players are brainwashed. The fans are brainwashed. We just accept that’s the way it is. You can’t push back against it. Well, you can. They just don’t do it often enough,” he exclaimed.
One thing is sure, the draft — especially the NFL Draft — is a big deal upon which millions of bucks are spent annually.
In any case, being a former labor lawyer, Florio does admit that the draft is perfectly legal. After all, the player’s union has agreed to the situation. But if it weren’t for that agreement, Florio thinks the Draft would actually be illegal.
“If you take away the union, it’s a blatant antitrust violation,” Florio insisted. “It’s no different than in a given community a kid gets a job after school. You have Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell, and Arby’s, and they decide who is going to get dibs on which kid.”
Why is he speaking out against an institution literally no one cares to question?
“I’ll still make those arguments,” he explained. “Sometimes you just have to peel the curtain back and show people this is really how it’s happening. Maybe there are some issues people should be concerned about, even if they’re not.”
Listen. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of Mike Florio screaming in the wilderness.
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