Opinion: Joneses trying to taint Dak with contract leaks

Being America’s Team comes with a price, and at times it is a silly one. Our national obsession with 24/7 coverage of our most popular sport sets the stage for lots of NFL discussion that has nothing to do with games.

Thus, we arrived at the sky-isfalling notion this week that young Dak Prescott is looking to shatter the league’s salary structure in seeking $40 million per season.

Keep in mind that the average salary for the top-paid quarterback tends to go up about $1 million with each new contract. Seattle’s Russell Wilson sits atop the current list at $35 million. The likes of Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers fall in right behind.

All of these are highly experienced quarterbacks.

All have won Super Bowls. The notion that the greedy agents representing Prescott were going to blow by this figure by $5 million was absurd the minute it was made public Monday afternoon.

That led to speculation from around the media world that Prescott already had rejected a $30 million-per-year proposal, given that Atlanta’s Matt Ryan sits in the No. 5 spot at that figure.

So with virtually none of this information leaking from agents and all of it flowing out of training camp in Oxnard, why exactly are the Joneses so hell-bent on winning a public relations battle with players? I doubt I need to remind Jerry or Stephen that this is Dallas, and fans still tend to perceive players seeking new deals as the greedier of the sides.

There’s no need to keep putting out information that paints the stars of this franchise as moneygrubbing ingrates.