NFL 'Bag' Hall of Fame: Players who maximized contract leverage - ESPN

It's time to bestow a new honor on a handful of NFL legends. While many of these players do great work on the field, I'm happy to finally give them the credit they deserve for what they've done in fighting some of the most penurious people on the planet: NFL team owners. It's time to induct the inaugural class of players into the Bag Hall of Fame (BHOF).

Now, I need to be very clear here. This isn't an attempt to honor players who were overpaid or didn't deserve the money they made during their time in the NFL. I'd reject that concept in principle: Just about every player, past or present, was or is underpaid relative to the risks they take by playing professional football. There's no fun in poking at backup quarterbacks who were able to collect checks while rarely stepping on the field.

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Instead, I want to reward the players who did the best job of maximizing their leverage and getting paid for their ability. Players who pushed holdouts to the next level. Players who bet on themselves and were handsomely rewarded for doing so. Players who even managed to represent themselves in negotiations and pocket millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to an agent.

For this first class, the selection committee (me) is inducting eight players into what will surely one day be a physical Hall of Fame. Most of the players are still active, but they've already done enough to earn their way into the BHOF without a five-year waiting period. Many of them have won Super Bowls, and a handful are either in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or should end up in Canton someday. That Hall of Fame, though, won't be the only institution honoring them for their work. Here's our first class of players:

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