“Sure, we could have demanded he pay us the money back. But that didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Andrew was more than just our quarterback, he was the person we rallied around after we let Peyton Manning go He brought us together: our present, our future and our glorious past. From our point of view, he helped…

Or perhaps his agent used the leverage of him potentially sitting out the whole year on IR with the calf issue to come to a reasonable compromise? I don’t know that attributing this all to the generosity of the Colts is warranted.

I dunno -- remember how a few short months ago we were all talking about how baseball is dead b/c Kyler Murray chose football over it? I think we might be making too big of a deal out of one constantly-injured dude deciding to hang it up.

I could be wrong, but I believe he’s being sarcastic and simply showing how rediculous it is to compare what luck does with steel workers.

So last year NFL revenues were about 16 billion dollars, of which players get a little less than half, call it 8 billion. 53 NFL players x 32 teams x $60k each = $102 million, for all the players combined. A reduction in pay of 99%. 

As I see it, there are three alternatives:

Teams cut players two weeks before the season. Why should it be a one-way street?

The Major sport that’s hardest on your body, is far and away the worst for your brain (and long term risks), but pays far and away the least and guarantees nothing in contracts (and has a history of fucking over it’s retirees) is having a problem with players walking away from the game.

If there was a young man in literally any other profession who made $100 million before he was 30 and decided to retire, he would be lauded. The Wall Street Journal would write thousands of words of wankery praising his acumen and smarts and god bless America.

What it really tells you is that when you come to football purely for love of the game (i.e., especially if you come from an upbringing of privilege) and make a relatively huge amount of money in your early career, it doesn’t matter how good you might have been or how much more money you probably stood to earn, it’s…

I hope that NFL players take note of the lack of empathy people have shown Andrew Luck during this entire process. Don’t feel guilty about hold-outs for more money. Get as much money as you can and get the hell out before it becomes a detriment to your health. 

Andrew Luck’s retirement will only increase the primal urgency of Football Men to find True Football Believers to play football, so that they don’t ever question their faith in it.

I say Drew deletes the whole article and just posts the announcement of Luck retiring.

Andrew Luck: I’m tired of being in a never ending cycle of pain and rehab, it’s made me hate my job and my life, I don’t think it’s fair to myself or to the team to keep trying to play.

On the other hand his column now only needs to be one line.

I was going to mention how lame it was of him to wait until this late in the pre-season to announce his retirement, but in all fairness he did give a two-week notice.

No, because you shouldn't have been drafting him at all. It was clear that he was a huge question mark even before this 

The default, basest fandom for all sports is “I want to win win win and if you do something that makes winning less likely then FUCK YOU!”

He was my favorite current quarterback. Fuck. Godspeed, you brilliant mutant man-ape gone wrong

“Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit quaaludes.”