Yes, that's what this real estate blog post is talking about. Yes, it's a cheap way to generate Google buzz, worthless Front Range Colorado Celebrity Blather implanted in my blog of professional specialty. Deal with it. And I'll just get it out of the way: Jay is dumber as a seller than he is in a December Red Zone. I doubt he's fooling anyone with a 35% mark-up on his Castle Pine Shrine to #6, a remarkable run-up considering the rest of that price point was FLAT over the last 3 years. I dunno, Recession-Denial is easy when you have all that hair to coif.
By trade, I am a problem solver. REALTOR's in 2009 are especially adroit negotiators as the entire industry fights over the lovely scraps of balloon leftover from the real estate bubble bursting. That's what we do out here in the wilds of realty... it ain't sophisticated, and it ain't just multi-part State-Approved forms we're filling out. We problem solve.
Some of us educate on negotiating your way out of the paper bag you find yourself in. Like the one Josh McDaniel probably wishes was covering his head each time he's seen in public. Guys like me actually enjoy exploring the underbelly of human emotion and finding the opportunities that lie within.
Like the opportunities within hurt feelings. Sometimes my feelings get hurt. Like when I as a selling agent wrote an offer for a buyer's agent on my own $1 million plus listing and all that other agent did was forward the email. Or when it took six days to get a counterproposal on a lowball offer the listing agent basically encouraged my buyers to write and then claimed "insult". Or when a listing is appraised, photographed and inspected and then never comes on the market. Or when six out of seven deals in 45 days either don't come together or fall apart completely due to any number of circumstances, not the least of which were two notable incidents of bald-faced lying. There are lots of feelings being hurt out here in the real economy. Real lives actually go down in flames. But despite the scorched eyebrows and smell of singed skin, I move on. I plod on. I problem solve. This Josh and Jay problem is a piece of cake.
It's a piece of cake because there are predictable shades of hubris clashing over nothing but "principal". That's nice and centered. At least it isn't reality. Reality is messy. "Principal?" That's easy! There is the do-nothing owner, proclaiming himself in charge, but oh my, should he even need to offer his driver directions, he's gonna have to winter in Cheyenne. There's the new head coach/taskmaster/Jon-Gruden-Chucky-Face-with-Pimples who is actually younger than myself, and his Machiavellian new GM/Spreadsheet-Freak/Rutgers-Finance-Major-Right-Tackle-Walk-On buddy Brian Xanders. Can you sense the "X" Factor just begging to leap off the screen? That's XANDERS, with an X. This to go along with a disaffected youth born with a howitzer right arm and a disposition this side of Morrissey, a chucklehead 
born in Santa Claus, IN with a hairstyle that is Flock-of-Seagulls meets SAE.
His agent is from Harrisburg, MS and goes by the handle "Bus". C'mon, folks. And they're moaning about "principal". This is an easy fix. Even Hollywood screenwriters that got Dreamworks to bankroll Monsters versus Aliens could draft out a dozen plot-lines more real-world than this.
Here's the thing that a specialist in negotiating with human emotion like myself can glean from this situation: it's all about people. Oh yeah, sounds trite, huh? Well it sure isn't about the money. That's why the "X-Factor", Colonel Xanders has no pull. It's why "Bus" the agent is going after trades. It's why Vandy-Mop is headed for another destination within three weeks and won't wear blue and orange this season. (see, money is part of the equation only during free agency. After toiling in Detroit, you know, Real World Land, for say, three seasons, I think Jay might actually want to bankroll his next real estate investment with a winner. He could still return to the Mile High City) The Broncs have lots of cap room to fix this. They have a weak and clueless owner with billions in Canadian oil money dribbling out of his pocket. (Hey, Mike Shanahan still thinks he's the best owner in sports. This from the dude who subdivided off an acre of said owner's estate for the guest cottage on his 30,000+ acre house) There's precedent for cash. But that hasn't entered the fray, because no one seems to have asked for it. Each side just wants to win an argument. So what fixes this?
If you're the Broncos (who I advocate for in this precious little cat fight), you let the other side think they win. You move the effected party with his hand-selected choice of party guests to a new destination. That's right, you ship Jay and you send him off with his entourage. The NFL has really not done a monster trade since Herschel Walker went from Dallas to MN that bequeathed three titles in five years to Big D and a decade of frozen nihilism that I think spawned the movie Fargo out of sad-sack 
Vikings fans. That's called "let's let the Vikings think they won this one" and then wrecking havoc on the entire league with year's of awesome stock-piled picks. It's probably time for something approaching that order. Every team in the league will have a harder time selling tickets, and there's nothing like bringing in a young Pro Bowl Quarterback to grease the season ticket sales. The Bus is driving and he got McNair out of TN and Favre out of Green Bay. His new goal is to get Jay to a new destination where he will be embraced as the Football Throwing Messiah he was born to be. Well what could make Jay feel better than thumbing it at both Matt Leinart and Vince Young and being traded for the first overall pick in the draft? Remember, those two BCS Pretty Boys were picked ahead of Jay in 2006. How sweet would it be to be traded for the number one pick where he's the new face of a franchise, instant starter, and they're both back hugging the pine in Tempe and Nashville? Problem: Won't happen. Element of surprise (and Matt Millen) are both gone from the equation and Detroit. But it can still be done with another strategically-placed prop, so it at least "feels" like he was traded for number one. If the Broncs ship Jay along with his best buddy (and ironically, a Bus Cook client!) Tony Sheffler out of Denver, they can get first pick mileage and more out of it. God Bless the Motor City, they need something to lighten their real-world-doldrums (like 11% unemployment, a post Internatl Combustion Universe, Jay Leno doing a USO stop in your suburbs), and Rocket-Head, I mean Arm, Jay, "Sheff" and current Lion Calvin Johnson would make a helluva Trio. Can't you just see Lions fans thinking that they died and went to, well, at least Gary, IN? The Broncos get back the number one overall pick and the Lions first third round pick, the 65th in the draft. Bus looks like a hero, people start talking about a possible playoff run for Detroit, and people sit around scratching their heads about those dim bulbs in Denver. But those dim bulbs don't keep the number one, either. That gets shipped to Tampa in exchange for their first round pick (17) and a defensive end of which Tampa seems to have several, who all come out of a 3-4 and lives to blitz and create turnovers (the Tampa Way), and a later pick like fourth or fifth round. Tampa wins too! They finally can get a quarter back (Matt Stafford, the likely Number One Pick), who as a Georgia Bulldog is already painfully familiar with Florida football, and Tampa also gets buzz about maybe not this year, but soon, very soon, they will be a team to once again reckon with.
If you're the Broncos, what are you left with from this fight over "principal"? Another defensive player who can probably ball if he's from Tampa and a bunch of picks. Actually, a bunch of perfect picks to fix their many problems. The 12th overall pick, which they likely use on an LSU defensive end or one of two USC linebackers. At this point, the defense is nearly fixed. So the offense if broken without Cutler... They also have the 17th pick, a mid 2nd round pick, 2 third round picks and 2 4th round picks, two fifth round picks, a sixth and a pair of 7ths. Granted, a different brain trust drafted last year, but they got Eddie Royal and his 90+ catches out of the 2nd round. Isn't that New England system successful with self-sacrificing role players who buy in? Isn't that haul of picks the ideal way of doing it? Didn't they want to trade for a USC quarterback two weeks ago, guy named Cassel? By 17 they can get Matt Sanchez, USC's starter who was one possession in Corvallis, OR from going 13-0 last year. Pete Carroll thinks he is a better leader than Leinart. They might still get James Lauranitis in the middle 2nd round, the next Randy Gradishar right down to the likely number selection and alma mater, more defensive help in the 3rd round plus a solid running back and then draft for depth in the fourth round (that's where they mined Sheffler and Brandon Marshall in 2006).
It can no longer be a "defense away from a championship" team. It's a team in total and complete transition. Brandon Marshall is probably out until Halloween since he also likes to get into goofy arguments and fights (see a pattern here in this class of '06?). If I really wanted to get all string theory on you and correlate strange football to weirder real estate, I might talk about the economic tipping point that was April, 2006, when the real estate market went off the cliff and what looked like the Donkey's Salvation (Cutler, Dumervil, Marshall, Sheffler and a trade for Javon Walker) was really just the Emperor prancing around in the buff. The Shanahan Way and the Fat-Bottomed American Way have numerous unsavory correlations. The Broncs won't win much more than 8 or 9 games next year, and our market is going to putter along unfriendly and kinda surly for the next 18 months. But where will they both be in 24 months? Capologists can learn much from the Buffett Mantra: Be Cautious when others are Greedy. Be Greedy when others are Cautious. When you can cloak that auction as doing a favor for another party... well, I think they call that "game on."
Apparently the Broncos new management and coaching structure isn't too suave with the Shanny-faves, doesn't mince words, doesn't have the boys over for 24 ounce porterhouses on the grill big enough to thaw Cherry Creek Reservoir. Okay. Seems kind of boorish and childish to not play nice. Afterall, the Jets were making headlines wining and dining free agents. The Seahawks flew Housh over Qwest Field with his highlights playing on the Jumbotron and had a custom made pair of his favorite receiving gloves trimmed in Seahawk colors waiting for him in a made-up locker. I don't think McDaniels and Xanders know to brush their teeth before a meeting, let alone how to flatter a person. So that's not their strength. But as all of us economic civilian survivors know, it's best to stick to playing your hand that's the strongest. Out with the old, in with the new. The dozen or so free agents brought in under cap indicate "The X Factor" is a pretty shrewd negotiator. Maybe he and Chucky Jr. are both good at ticking young untitled punks off. But if the system really works, find willing cogs who owe you. Don't try and please those who think you owe them. Let the Losers, Win. They're still Losers.
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