Micah Parsons' latest deal with Bleacher Report is part of the problem for the Dallas Cowboys, a franchise with one playoff win in the last five years.
The star linebacker reached a multi-year extension with Bleacher Report that will also make him the president of B/R Gridiron while still hosting his own podcast.
Now, maybe this title is just a kind gesture that carries the same weight as a celebrity's honorary doctorate. Parsons could be as much of a B/R Gridiron president as Ben Affleck is a doctor.
But under the assumption that this is a normal job, shouldn't the focus solely be on football?
President John F. Kennedy famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
Modern Cowboy players should be asked something similar because it no longer seems like they want to do their part to help the Cowboys brand, but instead use the Cowboys to help their brand. The focus might be out of whack.
It's something former Cowboys star running back Emmitt Smith discussed during Super Bowl week.
"What they're living off of is what happened in the past, not what's going down right now. They're not establishing their own legacy, let alone building off of the legacy that was established," Smith told Pro Football Talk.
"No one wants to play hard anymore. They want to be on the Cowboys. Tell me how good I am, see me on my Instagram, on my podcast, I'm doing all this stuff. Everything, without doing anything," Smith continued.
Jerry Jones is a bombastic owner who enjoys the spotlight himself. He might even love the attention these types of ventures from his players now bring to his franchise. But when the Cowboys were winning Super Bowls during his ownership, it was with a far more reserved quarterback in Troy Aikman leading the team.
An NFL career is only so long (3.3 years on average, in fact). Afterwards, you can move into other ventures, like so many former Cowboys and other NFL players have done, mostly in the sports media world.
Peyton Manning, for example, waited until well after his career to begin the ManningCast and Omaha Productions. During his playing career, you could never doubt Manning's focus or desire to win.
How could Parsons, or any athlete for that matter, claim to be taking their football season as seriously as possible, or that they are as dialed in as possible, when they're working another job?
Does this hurt the Cowboys' chances of winning a Super Bowl? Maybe not. But does it help?
For an athlete in their prime, let alone the second highest paid player on the roster of "America's Team," the focus should be solely on winning, not a podcast or what Bleacher Report should do for its football content during Week Six of the NFL season.
As Bill Parcells would say, "If you have a Plan B, you don't have a Plan A." Plan A for Parsons should be winning multiple playoff games for the first time in his career.
