NFL training camps are set to open up in a little over a week or so and you know what that means?  It's "hold-out season"!

It drives me crazy.  This has always been one of my biggest pet peeves in sports.  Every year, there are star players who have a valid contract, that decide they aren't getting paid enough, so they threaten to hold out from training camp until they get a new contract.

It's a form of blackmail if you ask me.  It is also the ultimate in ego-maniacal greed.  What the player is really saying is that "I am so valuable to you, that you will not be able to live without my contributions on the field or in the locker room". 

In many cases, these players are also trying to get out of putting themselves through the rigors of training camp, and instead sitting around in their air-conditioned multi million dollar homes waiting for a call from their agent to go back to work.  It's amazing how many of these hold-outs end just after the rest of the team breaks camp and start getting ready for week one.

It is a tried and true strategy and has a long tradition.  Brett Favre seemed to do it every other year.  Add in his retirements/unretirements and I don't think ol' Brett went to a training camp in his last ten years in the league.  Last year, the big name was Chris Johnson.  This year, Ed Reed has made the most noise.  Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice and Matt Forte have also threatened long holdouts if their teams don't show them the money.

The thing that bothers me the most about these situations is that these players all have valid contracts with time left on them.  They all signed those contracts at one point, and the money on the bottom line must have looked pretty doggone good to them at the time, or they wouldn't have signed them.  No one was holding a gun to their head.  Now, just because too many other players at their position are making more money than they are, they feel they are entitled to earning their fair share.

Many times their teams will reluctantly agree and out of a sense of fairness, will back down and agree to renegotiate their deals.  I don't have a problem with teams doing this if they chose to, but by no means do I feel they need to.  These players signed deals.  If they wanted more money then, they should have negotiated it.  If they felt that renegotiating a contract was going to be needed in the future, then goshdarnit, they should have asked for a shorter term in the contract!

The funny thing about these hold-outs is that the players who are holding out often get their comeuppance.  Chris Johnson held out until the first week last season, came to camp late, and never really got caught up.  He paid for it severely with an awful 2011 season. 

How many careers have been ruined by a rookie draft pick holding out before their first camp?  I am convinced that Aaron Maybin's holdout that got him into camp very late in his rookie year cost him his career with Buffalo.  He was NEVER able to catch up.  It's happened countless times with other rookies.

I have no problem whatsoever with my favorite team playing hardball with these greedy S.O.B's.  As far as I am concerned, they can wave their contract in the players' and their agents faces and say, "See this?  Is that your handwriting?  Did someone forge this?  No?  Well, if it was you who signed this, then suit up, get your ass to training camp and play football.  If you continue to play well for us, we will pay you all that you ask for when the contract is up.  If you don't like that, stay home and pound sand, while we save on payroll and stop cutting you checks!"

Another thing is, whenever teams give in and renegotiate a deal, then that player is happy for about two years, until four or five other players at that position sign new contracts again, and then the player feels unappreciated and holds out again.  The cycle repeats itself.

The bottom line that these players (and fans to some extent) have to realize is that no one is irreplaceable.  The football world will go on, with or without you. 

Shut up, leave "show me the money" to Jerry Maguire, and get your asses to camp and play!  Or else stay home and get a real job selling cars or delivering mail or something.  Then maybe you will have an appreciation for playing a stinking game for a living.

To donate to clinical trials and research to cure my blinding eye disease, please go to www.curechm.org