In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with any club or franchise, i.e. not under contract to any specific team. The term is also used in reference to a player who is under contract at present, but who is allowed to solicit contract offers from other teams. In some circumstances, the free agent's options are limited by league rules.
The term came into wider use after sports leagues stopped using a "reserve clause", which provided a repetitive option for the club to renew the contract for one or more years but did not allow the player to terminate it.
Read more about Free Agent: Drawbacks For Owners, Deadlines
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or agent:
“Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu’d then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The average American is a good sport, plays by the rules. But this war is no game. And no secret agent is a hero or a good sport—that is, no living agent.”
—John Monks, Jr., U.S. screenwriter, Sy Bartlett, and Henry Hathaway. Robert Sharkey (James Cagney)