One of the great things about being a sports fan, a message board guy, or Kenny Wilkerson, is that you get to talk out of your ass about things you really don’t know a whole hell of a lot about.

Even better, when you’re talking out of your ass about sports contracts, you can usually be pretty confident that whomever you’re talking to probably doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot about it either. So if you’re willing to speak in absolutes, present your opinions as facts, and can string together a few reasonably-coherent sentences, chances are you’ll come off like you know what you’re talking about.

But you don’t.

Message board reaction to any high-dollar signing is always the same. First, there are the cries of how absurdly [insert GM] “overpaid” for [insert player.] These are especially hilarious when they’re specific (”$9.43 million??? He’s not worth a penny over $9.37 million!!!”

Then there are those who try to assign a dollar value to a given statistic. See, a touchdown is worth $1.13 million, a sack is worth $0.68 million, one rushing yard is worth $27,342.95 and so on. Then once we’ve established arbitrary dollar values for each stat, we simply add them up to determine exactly how stupid the GM was for “giving” the player more than that.

Others are big on “slotting” contracts based on their own subjective determination of the player’s relative merit. Dwight Freeney isn’t the best defensive defensive player of all time, therefore, he should never get a penny more than Lawrence Taylor got. Or Jack Lambert. Or Jim Thorpe. Name your favorite.

Thankfully, more often it’s the slightly-less-objectionable modified version of this stance. The one that grudgingly acknowledges inflation and at least confines the subjective valuations to the context of the current market. The question becomes “Is Freeney the best defensive player in the league right now?” Because if not, OMGOVERPAID!!!!!

Eventually, you’ll get the inevitable righteous grandstanding from a handful of people who actually believe the ridiculous notion that athletes should be paid according to their value to society. You know, the ones who believe that if there were any JUSTICE(!!!!!!!) football players would get $13/hour and cops/firefighters/teachers/[insert noble profession] would get the tens of millions. Those people should be, in ascending order of preferability: A) ignored, B) mocked mercilessly, C) kicked in the throat.

But most of the time what it comes down to is the mistaken notion that there’s some kind of objective scale out there that maps any given player’s overall impact on his team to a dollar value, and that it just needs to be discovered or otherwise established. Preferably by some really, really super-smart message board guy. Whether it’s an absolute scale like X stat = Y dollars, or a sliding scale like a merit-based “this guy is 20% better than that guy, therefore that guy’s contract should be 20% less than this guy’s contract” it’s all bullshit.

Player valuation isn’t science. Never was, never will be. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all, 100% objective dollar “value” for any player.

Which is not to say that mistakes aren’t made. Of course they are. Some GM’s make them more often than others. There is certainly such a thing as “overpaying.” But it’s impossible for an outside observer like Message Board Guy to determine with any degree of reliability whether or not the $9.46 million is a good deal or a bad deal for the team. That can only be judged in hindsight. The best the outside observer can do is to make an educated guess based on his own conclusions about the GM’s overall level of competence, which in turn is based on the GM’s past performance (again, hindsight.)

There’s nothing wrong with hindsight. Hell, it’s 20/20. Hindsight should be used whenever it’s available. But for some reason, on message boards, hindsight seems to be looked upon with contempt, while foresight is celebrated. The problem is that 99% of the time, message board foresight is bullshit. It’s little more than the guess of a person who’s not qualified to guess in the first place. You might as well flip a coin.

Here are a few questions for Message Board Guy who’s convinced that the “right” answer for Player X is $12.32 million a year over 7 years:

What if the coach thinks he’s an asshole? How much should he be docked for that? $1 million? $2 million? What if the coach thinks he’s a really huge asshole rather than just a kinda-sorta asshole?

What if he’s blocking a stud 6th round rookie that nobody knows is a stud yet? Is he still worth exactly the same amount of money?

Is the player worth the exact same amount of money to a contender as he is to a rebuilding team or a perpetual bottom-feeder?

What if he’s an unbelievable role model for a team full of young guys? How many dollars is that worth?

How many more dollars should he get if half the roster is going to go absolutely apeshit if you let him sign elsewhere? Or, similarly, let’s say you’re Green Bay… how many more dollars is a guy worth for the fact that Brett Favre will retire if you let him leave, and you’re up shit creek if Favre leaves because he’s the only thing putting asses in the seats at Lambeau?

How much less is a guy worth if there’s a better player at the position available in free agency? What if you can’t get that better player? What if you can get that better player, but then you find out that your coach thinks he’s an asshole?

How much less is a guy worth if he was born and raised in or around your geographical location, and desperately wants to play for your team because he’s a HOMER(!!!!)

How much more is a guy worth if you desperately need him, but he desperately wants to go elsewhere? How much money do you throw at him to overcome whatever personal objections he may have, assuming you can’t afford to lose him?

Unless you have access to information that you, as Message Board Guy, DO NOT have access to, how in the hell do you even begin to answer those questions? Some of those questions even the GM can’t really answer. He has to try to read the player’s mind, or the agent’s. He may have to call bluffs. He may have his own bluffs called. Often, he ultimately has to go with his gut and make the best guess he can.

And if he’s guessing, then what the fuck makes you think you’ve got it all figured out?

The bottom line is that there’s a reason they call it “the art of negotiation.” Not everything can be quantified. A player’s “value” is fluid, subjective, affected by more factors than you can possibly know as an outside observer, some of those factors being permanent, and some ever-changing.

The best you can hope for is that your GM is competent. That whatever dollar amount he assigns to a player at any given time is based on sound interpretations of the information at his disposal (which far exceeds the information at your disposal) and savvy decision-making.

Unless, of course, he tells the local paper that he thinks it’s “not right” that your Pro Bowl quarterback makes more than the hard-working person who’s exposing thirty of your local braindead teenagers to the wonders of Beowulf. If he says that, then you might as well just shoot yourself in the face.