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
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“As men’s habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.”
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