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Last year, Joel Corry wrote us the Cliffs Notes on holdouts ranging from --- > productive to suicidal and everyplace in between.  It's a definitive read.  

And it's a funny thing, because we fans think of agents and get images of 12-month-olds crying and banging their spoons in their high chairs.  But, if you take a second to actually listen to them, they're usually quite reasonable.  Hey, Microsoft isn't going to hire you as their representation if you just tell all their business partners "sit down quickly and write us seventy for your one hundred."

Let's excerpt his Cliffs Notes as they might apply to Bam Bam:

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A holdout should really be a last resort after all other options for a resolution have been exhausted.  Players under contract are withholding services they are contractually obligated to perform while [unsigned draft picks, and players with restricted free agent, franchise or transition tenders who aren't under contract] have no such obligation.

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Toldja the man was a paragon of reason.

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We would attempt to gauge the client's level of commitment beforehand by detailing the worst-case scenarios with his potential holdout .... The client would be given his team's history with holdouts. We would also provide him a league wide analysis of holdouts over the previous five years and the success rate.

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Worst-case scenario for Kam Chancellor would be ... well, there are about eight of them.  

But let's keep in mind that his BEST case scenario would be to get traded to the Tennessee Titans.  This would get his 2016 money "guaranteed," since he's so concerned that next year he might not be worth $5M as a football player.  This best-case scenario would also end all post-game celebratory beverages in the regular season, much less in the playoffs.  That, according to Corry, would be "caving in" on the Seahawks' part.  To trade him to a team of their choosing.

Yowch.

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A holdout is ultimately a test of both sides' resolve. Once a player misses the beginning of training camp, there usually isn't much dialogue with the agent and team early on when there is a contract impasse. If meaningful dialogue on a new contract resumes, it may not be until the middle of the preseason.

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Whereas everybody on the planet, other than Kam, is quite aware that there won't resume any meaningful dialogue on a new contract until the middle of "ever."  Every brick of info that we get about the "real world" of NFL holdouts leaves us more open-mouthed about what Chancellor is doing to himself.

We saw some Field Gulls reference to Sun Tzu's Art of War.  There's something in there somewhere about picking battles you can win.  But then again, that's a life lesson that very few of us have learned.  (No, LrKrBoi29, we weren't insinuating anything.)

Speaking of which, have you seen Johnny Knoxville vs Jared Allen?  The quarterback sack is at 0:45, whereas the crossing route is at 1:45.  Don't have coffee in your mouth when you see it.  ... Now JOHNNY, there is a man who is underpaid, Kam.  It wasn't Jared Allen calling for an extra Rolls Royce before he'd shoot that.  (View images of Kam Chancellor Cars.)

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Team comments can also give the agent or player an opening to start negotiating the contract in the media by making their position seem more equitable than the team's in an attempt to put public pressure on the team to give into their demands. In most cases, fans don't take a player's side in a contract dispute with a team. The public doesn't relate to a player being unhappy with what is a lucrative contract in their eyes or rejecting a substantial offer. Unusual circumstances are required for public sentiment to be with the player.

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Today, Kam's agent attempted to turn public sentiment towards the player by --- > icily informing us that Kam will not remit services until such time as the Seahawks do what he wants.

True, it's not like the agent is going to say "we intend to give up right after the third preseason game."  But neither do we expect the agent to work so hard to alienate us.  We're being Twittered that his teammates are imploring him to get his keister into kamp.  If I'm an agent, I think I can read tea leaves from teammates and apply them to the public at large.

Thomas and Sherman make twice what he does; that we'll give you.  But Kam makes sixty times what I do, and I don't feel like life turned out to be less than I hoped it would be.  Hey, looking at that picture of him in front of a "Wraith," I would not consider him underpaid if he were a Roman blinkin' gladiator.  Literally.  How much do you think gladiators made?  Yeah.

There comes a point when $1,000,000, or something, gives a man everything that he can really enjoy, everything that would do him any good to own.

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A major obstacle a player must overcome is a team's concern about establishing a precedent of giving into a player's demands for a new contract through a holdout.

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Oh!  Yeah, could be.  I could see it.

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Some teams view granting a trade as similar to giving the player a new contract where they are setting a precedent by rewarding negative behavior.

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However, I personally am warming quickly to the concept of this win-win situation.  Identify the NFL team with the highest ratio of "Expendable Quality Right Tackle" divided by "Wins in 2014" and reward Kam with a rickshaw trip to that city, preferably via Habana.  It might set a precedent, but that's life.

Neon Deon Bailey or whoever that guy is, he won't deliver the K.O.'s that Kam did.  But from a Safeco Field vantage point, it looks to us like the Seahawks have other players capable of delivering punishment.

Let's hope it's not TO Kam,

Dr D