Jeremy: It's Always About the Money

To quote Jeffrick: "...both Brees and Edgerin James took the most money they could get, even though it looks like their new teams will be much worse than their old ones."
I know that if you really dissected my opinion on this issue you'd probably find that I talk out of both sides of my mouth, but in professional sports, and to some extent college sports too, it's always about the money. I know that the problem, for me, comes in with players who say "screw you" to whatever team they've been with, where the fans have fallen in love with them, to go where the money is. I'm working on that. I've admitted that this is a fault of mine, and I believe that admitting this problem is the first step to conquering it.
Of course out of the other side of my mouth you've seen me say things like David Stern has every right to enforce a dress code for NBA players because he's running a business which he has a right, and a duty, to protect. You've also seen me take a similar attitude with the new Vikings regime.
I'm prepared to bring my opinions of the players attitude toward money closer to my opinion of the owners attitude toward money.
I think Daunte Culpepper should be learning this lesson with me.
In his interview with Andrea Kremer, Daunte had this to say: "I wanted to know what [the Vikings] thought about me, if they thought I was a franchise guy, you know, let me be treated like that. I didn't really get the clarity on the situation, so I had to do what I had to do."
Daunte is right, he had to do what he had to do. But so did the Vikings, and I'm not sure that's the part of the equation that Daunte understands. Daunte has basically been begging for the Vikings to give him some kind of sign of what they think of him. He has wanted to know all along if they see him as a franchise guy or not. But Daunte hasn't proven to them, through his actions following his injury, that he's willing to act like that guy off the field, and he hasn't been rehabing at Winter Park so as to show them that he is physically making progress to become a franchise guy on the field.
Despite Zygi saying that Daunte was their franchise quarterback both verbally and financially, and Brad Childress saying that Daunte was their franchise guy when he started, Daunte has continued to push the Vikings into a decision that they didn't have all of the information that they needed to make. He didn't act like a team leader off the field, and the new regime, following the injury, has no clue if he's going to be able to be a leader on the field.
So by forcing the Vikings hand, Daunte reduced this decision, for the Vikings, down to the lowest common denomenator, as always, money. Daunte forced the Vikings to make a business decision based solely on risk and possible return on investment.
I think that's the part about this whole situation that bothers me the most. Daunte continues to lay blame on the Vikings, without taking any responsibility for what has happened. He cannot blame all of this on the Vikings, when he wasn't willing to put himself in front of the decision makers at every opportunity to show them that he was willing to be the leader that he was asking to be paid like.