`Give me 25 guys playing for a contract and I'll show you a world champion,"

Great quote!! Sparky is a true LEGEND! The only reason why teams sign players to long term deals is because of free agency. Teams want to control the player's salary for a set amount of years and they don't want to lose the player to another team. Otherwise, signing players annually to one-year deals would DEFINITELY improve players performance. Players playing for their "financial life" would be much more motivated than players that are "fat & content" with big long-term contracts. The days of players taking whatever the team offers them and playing to win ARE WAY LONG GONE!! LIKE PRE-HISTORIC TIMES!! Seriously, if you read about some of the early legends of the game getting paid whatever the team decided, on annual one year contracts you'd be truly AMAZED!!