In professional sports, a franchise player is an athlete who is not simply the best player on their team, but a player that the team can build their "franchise" (team) around for the foreseeable future. The misunderstanding that a franchise player is only "the best player on a team" disregards the fact that an inordinately bad team will undoubtedly still employ a player with superior skills, relative to his team. However, such a player could be so bad in comparison to players at large that labeling such a player a franchise player would be inappropriate. It is an elite status, but it is not necessarily a singular position; a large team such as an American football team might have a few franchise players at different positions. The term may be used alongside a particular position name to describe a player, such as a "franchise quarterback".
Read more about Franchise Player: Overview, NFL Usage, MLS Usage
Famous quotes containing the words franchise and/or player:
“To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise ...”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)