Jimmy Graham Loses $5 Million In Part For Listing Himself As A Tight End On Twitter

from the the-poorest-saint dept

Thu, Jul 3rd 2014 4:11pm — Timothy Geigner

We've had a great many discussions about how employers react to the social media content of their employees. There have been questions over whether employers should be able to fire staff for Facebook content, whether staff can be perma-banned from using social media sites at all, or even whether or not employees should be required to cough up social media passwords to their employers. These stories tend to focus on an employer doing something that makes the employee uncomfortable.

You want to know what's really an uncomfortable result of an employer looking into an employee's social media account? How about losing five million dollars? That's exactly what happened to New Orleans Saints receiving tight end Jimmy Graham.

Unable to negotiate a deal, the Saints slapped Jimmy Graham with a franchise tag as a tight end. Graham disagreed, declaring himself a receiver, in order that he be paid like one. The dispute went to arbitration, and today arbitrator Stephen Burbank came down on the Saints' side. The difference is significant. A franchise tag pays a player the average of the five highest-paid players at that position, and WRs—especially the top tier—are paid better than their TE counterparts. A ruling favorable to Graham would have seen him make $12.312 million this season; instead, he'll make $7.035 million.

For you non-sports fans out there, the reason for the average price difference is due to the fact that a team's wide receivers are generally more skilled players compared with tight ends. Typically, receivers primarily, you know, receive, as in the ball, typically on pass plays. Tight ends traditionally occasionally catch passes, but are often used as on-the-line blockers as well and aren't considered to have the catching, jumping, and speed skills of a receiver. For you non-Jimmy Graham fans out there, Graham breaks the stereotype completely, having led his team in receptions, caught yards, and receiving touchdowns. His argument that he wasn't really a tight end had a ton of merit. Unfortunately for Jimmy Graham, the arbiter took to the opinion of Jimmy Graham in part when rendering his decision.

The arbitrator's decision isn't public, but dribs and drabs of Burbank's reasoning have come out. (Ian Rapaport and Albert Breer are your best sources.) Among Burbank's justifications:

-Graham attends TE position meetings.
-Graham was drafted by the Saints as a TE.
-Graham lists himself as a TE in his Twitter bio. (Yes, the Saints argued this.) Burbank, via Rapaport: "Mr. Graham refers to himself as a tight end in social media that he controls and his agents do so as well."
-Graham lined up within four yards of the offensive line on a majority of his snaps last season.

Oops. Kind of hard to argue that you're not a tight end when your own Twitter bio calls you a tight end. Now, the article notes that the Twitter bio probably wasn't the key factor in the decision, stating that the arbiter likely instead focused on how close to the offensive linemen Graham started most plays (which is stupid, by the way), but it did serve as a sort of catchy "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" moment against his claim.

Either way, before you go telling your bosses what role you play in a company, probably best that you get your story straight with your social media accounts first.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: arbitration, contracts, football, franchise player, jimmy graham, tight end
Companies: nfl, twitter

12 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 4:21pm

Confused
If I start calling myself CEO, of a company I work for, on my social media, and for some reason get called into arbitration with that company, the arbitrator must be cognizant of my status as CEO?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 4:36pm

For you non-sports fans out there, the reason for the average price difference is due to the fact that a team's wide receivers are generally more skilled players compared with tight ends. Typically, receivers primarily, you know, receive, as in the ball, typically on pass plays. Tight ends traditionally occasionally catch passes, but are often used as on-the-line blockers as well and aren't considered to have the catching, jumping, and speed skills of a receiver.

I'd like to see a rule enforced here that soccer pussies cannot write about football any more.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mason Wheeler (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 4:51pm

Oh, poor, poor Mr. Graham. How will he ever get by on only $7 million this year?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 4 Jul 2014 @ 1:16am
  
  Re:
  Hey, that's not funny. Malibu Media could tell you that, they could only afford the $16 dollar mansion this year...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Ninja (profile), 4 Jul 2014 @ 3:42am
  
  Re:
  I gladly accept 5% of that dear sir!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 5:08pm

maybe he wasn't talking about football.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:39pm
  
  Re:
  Hard to believe the sophomoric comment above got voted an LOL before this one.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
John, 3 Jul 2014 @ 5:22pm

Weird pay system in a free market
I would have thought in the "land of the free" that each player would negotiate their contract based on how *valuable* they are to the team & not the position they played. Seems odd that the another player tagged as a Receiver will be paid $5m more than Graham despite being less valuable (based on receiving stats mentioned above).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 4 Jul 2014 @ 4:17am
  
  Re: Weird pay system in a free market
  Thank the union for this standard.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Pragmatic, 5 Jul 2014 @ 9:35am
  
  Re: Weird pay system in a free market
  The market is not free. It's baked into the Constitution via protectionist laws such as IPR. As long as anti-competitive practices persist, the market will never be free. The best we can hope for is a more fair, more open market.
  
  Please can we stop pretending that there's any such thing as a free market? The promotion of this fantasy annoys me because so many people actually believe it's true.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Fenderson (profile), 7 Jul 2014 @ 8:57am
  
  Re: Weird pay system in a free market
  The NFL does not exist in the free market. It has been given special dispensation by Congress to be exempt from it -- specifically to allow collusion and price-fixing. This is why so many NFL-related issues become the subject of Congressional investigations: the trade-off made with Congress that allows them to be an exception also puts Congress into an oversight role.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:17pm

Wow, and here I thought he lost the $5 mil because the arbitrator ignored the plain language of the agreement and came up with some arbitrary 4 yard rule that is nowhere to be found in the CBA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]