NFL’s Franchise Tag = Indentured Servitude?

Is the NFL’s Franchise Tag modern day indentured servitude?  Wikipedia defines the NFL’s Franchise tag as follows: “In the National Football League, the franchise tag is a designation a team may apply to a player scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent. The tag binds the player to the team for one year if certain conditions are met. Each team has access each year to only one franchise tag (of either the exclusive or non-exclusive forms) or one transition tag. As a result, each team may only designate one player each year as that team’s franchise player. Usually reserved for players of great skill or of high importance to the team, a franchise tag allows a team’s manager the privilege of strategically retaining valuable free-agent players while seeking talent through the NFL draft or other acquisitions without exceeding the League’s salary cap.”

Sports by Brooks broke an article today about the fact that NFL teams are using these Franchise tags as a way to control their salary cap and now it’s theorized that NFL players are going to great lengths to avoid these tags.

Enter Leroy Hill of the Seattle Seachickens.  “The Seahawks’ Leroy Hill, who was cited for misdemeanor pot possession last month when he was pulled over in suburban Atlanta for having a busted brakelight in his 1975 Buick Electra. That’s right, Leroy was rolling in a busted-up Electra. Some folks are calling shenanigans…The idea here is that the Seahawks, who have professed a commitment only to “character” guys, won’t want to keep a guy getting pulled over with drugs, and they certainly won’t want to franchise him. Hill, then, would get to become a free agent and negotiate a long-term deal with any team he wants. So he basically drives around with the busted light and a little pot in a bookbag (I guess he’s taking a physics class in the offseason?) and waits to get pulled over.”

So the question is, is Leroy Hill an idiot or a genious and is the NFL’s Franchise Tag fair? I would assume that the NFL’s powerful labor union would be all over this if the franchise tag was illegal or unfair in terms of labor laws.  It’s hard to say this is a form of servitude after all they’re still making a ton of money and the fame that accompanies playing in the NFL however they are not getting true market value for their services.