Hawks LB Lofa Tatupu was among those who spoke to the current crop of NFL rookies at the annual symposium last week, as this story in the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise noted. According to the story, Tatupu warned players about how "your family suddenly gets a lot bigger when you're in the NFL" given all the people with their hands out for money. Also in the story, Tatupu compared pressure from groupies to what a player might face on the field. "It's like on a kickoff return," he said. "You just have to keep your head on a swivel." We all can relate, Lofa. We all can relate.

Every so often I'll go through the archives to learn about the future through the past, or to just familiarize myself with things that might prove helpful down the line. We are fortunate in that John Clayton was my predecessor (1986-1998). He left, but his stories stayed. The online archives go back to 1993, so there are thousands of Seahawks/NFL stories from which to choose (I will generally have 400-500 bylines in a year).

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This story from July 1996 examines free agency as it was developing a decade ago. The salary cap was about $40 million, compared to more than $100 million now. Many teams had yet to secure the publicly financed stadiums that have helped the league grow. The league's TV revenues were not what they have become. The league was strong, but nothing like it is today. Teams were starting to talk about the need for restraint in signing bonuses, but some never quite learned to walk the walk. That's why you still read variations of this story every offseason. Note: The following quotation was from the notes at the bottom of the story; I included it here because it seemed so out of place in today's mostly ultra-rich NFL, except the part about the build-us-a-stadium-or-we'll-move threat. Some things stay the same.

"Cash is so tight with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that most of their draft choices have been asked to take deferred signing-bonus checks through the regular season. The Bucs have sold fewer than 25,000 season tickets and might move if voters don't pass a bill to build them a new stadium." -- The News Tribune in July 1996