All the while, the fans applaud, of course.
They do need their football, after all.
Just ask the Eagles' owner, Jeffrey Lurie. He'll tell you. And if he's not willing to, there's always a Jeremiah Trotter, Jon Runyan, or Brian Westbrook to verify what life is really like for NFL players, year after year.
The guaranteed contract is really only a partial guarantee. Players rarely get to restructure their deals, but teams get to do so all the time.
And in the event restructuring is not a desired option for players, they can always choose to be waived and released, mired in the wilderness wondering where they'll land - if anywhere - while their former coaches provide faint praise.
"I'll put it to you this way, I was kind of surprised by what happened to me," Westbrook told me Thursday. "I knew there was a possibility I may not be coming back. But, in my heart, I honestly thought [the Eagles] were going to come to me and ask me to restructure my deal, to pay me less. I was kind of shocked they just let me go."
Westbrook was a fool - his words, not mine. But if there's consolation, it should come in the company of numerous baffled players whose ignorance seems to live in perpetuity.
While it's easy to label owners as greedy, it's just as easy to blame the players for providing an opening for their employers' gluttonous ways.
It was the players, after all, who allowed the owners and the league to collectively bargain their way out of a deal two years before it expired. The players' union, under the late Gene Upshaw, was indeed what ultimately placed Mr. Disciplinarian, commissioner Roger Goodell, in position to be the league's modern-day RoboCop.
