Last week, I had an intense clinic on mediation and sports law. I had to read this book called Getting Past No, which tackles how to transcend an impasse (a deadlock) between parties during a negotiation. According to the author, in order for two adversarial parties to get past ‘No,’ one or several of the following need to occur: suspending reaction to ‘no’ or attacks by buying time to think, stepping to the other party’s side (or putting yourself in their shoes), reframe and change the game (refocus on why you are both negotiating in the first place), build them a golden bridge (offer unmet interests, concessions and involve the other side), and use power to educate rather than escalate the situation to make it hard for the other side to say ‘No.’
The thing is, even though there is this system in place that aims to be fair to the players, as set out by the NFL Player Association’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, the reality is that it just doesn’t always happen for every player. I took advantage of a class on contract negotiation at a major firm that represents athletes (including some Seattle Seahawks but not Kam Chancellor). I asked the president what he thought about the situation and he told me that his firm would never hold out an athlete and that it’s a clear case of jealousy over finances. But that’s something Chancellor should be blaming his agent for, not the team. A player isn’t simply worth what the team is willing to pay for him to play; it can be dependent on how zealous your agent is, what the market looks like at that time, and what the team’s salary cap looks like.
Larry Stone from The Seattle Times recently wrote a brilliant piece about Kam backing himself into a corner, but after last Sunday’s game, it looks like the Seahawks stand to lose much more than just money. Just like that, the momentum swung and articles like this popped up all over the Internet. Would Kam have let Lance Kendricks by with 59 seconds left on the clock, forcing what should have been a comeback win into overtime? Probably not, but we’ll never know.
At the time the deal was crafted, clearly Chancellor had no qualms with it, otherwise he would have asked for a trade. But now the Seahawks are potentially facing a tough road ahead should his holdout remain indefinite. Any way you skin this cat, there’s a loser. But the Seahawks (and really every NFL team) has an interest in not rewarding this type of behavior. So how do these two parties get past this?
There’s allegedly a $900K discrepancy between what Chancellor wants to be paid next year ($9 million) and what the Seahawks want to give him ($8.1 million). The most important thing that I learned from that book is that as a negotiator, you have to discuss the other things that have value besides the money. For example, Chancellor has an interest in playing football. He’s not getting traded, so will the extra money really be enough of a reason for him not to show up? The Seahawks should also remind him about how beloved he is amongst the fans, but that his reputation is suffering each day that he doesn’t play. Conversely, Chancellor should remind the Seahawks that their franchise quarterback isn’t worth all the money in the world without a formidable team around him. Both parties need to swallow their pride and understand why each other are so upset. Chancellor has a financial interest in ensuring he and his family are taken care of after he retires, and the Seahawks have an interest in winning another championship. But he’s already lost way more than that 900K and the Seahawks lost a game they should have won. Notice how both these problems could be solved? Kam plays.
If negotiation were out of the question, Chancellor would have already walked away from the team. But, alas, Kam won’t even show up to VMAC to entertain a conversation in person (something critical to a negotiation working out, in my opinion). So maybe in the meantime, everybody should just put on their jammies and curl up with a good book I could recommend: Getting Past No.
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