Is There Life After Football? (8 page)

Any discussion of life after football needs to consider the nature of the game itself and how players feel about it. The vast majority of them loved the game. Will Siegel, who played for three teams in the 1950s and 1960s, captures a common sentiment:

I enjoyed playing football so much . . . I would play right now if I was physically capable of doing it for the same money. I couldn't wait for training camp and most of the guys felt the same way. I just loved to play football. It was so much fun with the guys. I don't know how I could have done anything that I enjoyed more. It was amazing.
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The game appeals on diverse levels, providing an experiential allure that seemingly overshadows other sports. The
physical
dimension of the NFL game is obvious. Players are extraordinary athletes, combining a rare blend of size, strength, speed, and grace. When players engage one another in a “collision” sport, violence is both commonplace and spectacular. It's the visceral essence of the pure physicality of the NFL. Mike Singletary, a notoriously violent player for the Chicago Bears, shares what he
felt
from a good hit on running back Eric Dickerson: “I don't feel pain from a hit like that. What I feel is joy. Joy for the tackle. Joy for myself. Joy for the other man. You understand me; I understand you. It's football, it's middle-linebacking. It's just . . . good for everybody.”
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But it's not merely the appeal of savage brutality. Rather, according to Michael Oriard, the “
tension
between the hit-or-be-hit side and the ballet side defines the essence of football: not the perfect pass or circus catch alone, nor the obliterating tackle, but the catch made despite the tackle.”
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It's the players' capacity to withstand violence and produce something exquisite from it. The challenge of playing hard and fast on the precipice of danger gives players a visceral, emotional high that's hard to duplicate.

For such a physical enterprise, football is also
intellectually demanding
. Coaching, tactics, game plans, and playbooks structure the game from beginning to end. Before each play, coaches electronically transmit
complex instructions for how to execute the next maneuver on both offense and defense. Playbooks are literally hundred of pages. Players and coaches spend hours watching game film and planning strategy. Each play implicates multiple formations and alignments, personnel packages, assignments, and predesignated adjustments. As former Super Bowl–winning coach Brian Billick observes, the days of straightforward plays, strategies, and schemes are over: “‘Brown Right 38' has given way to ‘Shotgun Solo Right Close Z Left 2 Jet Rattle Y Drag.' Modern football is a complex mix of trickery and misdirection, of shifts and motion and disguises.”
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The universal use of the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test to evaluate players attests to the NFL's demand for intellect of a sort—a combination of general intelligence and football smarts.
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Coaches demand functional intelligence and players have long acknowledged that playing smart is important. Phil Villapiano, formerly of the Oakland Raiders, observes that “God equals out the bodies. Someone's bigger, someone's quicker. . . . But the thing that makes you win is your brain.”
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Football is also
social
, the ultimate team game. Of course most sports require collaboration, cooperation, concerted actions. Football, however, demands the conscious coordination of all 11 players on each and every play. Success depends on each player executing his own responsibilities so they mesh with those of his teammates. Each player knows his role, his assignments, and those of others as well. Teammates feel like integral parts of the “corporate” body that can thrive only if each part is in sync. They experience their individual contributions as vital cogs in a carefully designed, well-oiled machine. Understood in terms of any number of familiar organic metaphors, playing winning football is ultimately social. Everyone depends on everyone else.

While the game may be the main reason for playing and watching football, the money surely captivates most NFL players and fans. Salaries in professional sports continually astound the public: How can players make so much playing a kid's game? To be sure, the figures bandied about
are enormous and players are acutely aware of their financial horizons. But the actual parameters of wealth in the NFL are poorly understood and frequently misrepresented. The financial dimension of players' lives demands close attention to separate mundane facts from sensationalized myths and fictions.

Any discussion of players' earnings needs to be placed in the context of the NFL's astronomical economy. It's the most lucrative sports league in the world. NFL teams are worth an average of $1.17 billion. By comparison, the world's top soccer teams have a mean value of $968 million. The average Major League Baseball team is worth $744 million and an NBA team is worth $509 million. The NFL's 15.4 percent annual operating margin exceeds that of any other sport. When we hear about players signing
multimillion
-dollar contracts, remember that they are being paid by
billionaire
owners.
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The average player salary in the NFL has been widely reported to a bit over $2 million for 2013.
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While not every player approaches this amount, there's still a lot of money spread around. Star players, of course, and those who man key positions, command a disproportionate share of the salary pool. Early in 2013, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers signed what is reputed to be the most lucrative contract in NFL history: $22 million a season for five years. That's $110 million total, added on to Rodgers' current $8.5 million per year contract. This topped a $20.1 million per year deal signed by Joe Flacco only two months before. Drew Brees reportedly makes $20 million per year, and Peyton Manning $19.2 million. Little brother Eli makes “only” $16.25 million a year. Across the board, quarterbacks in the NFL pull down nearly $4 million per season.
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And these figures don't include endorsement money.

Estimates of endorsement income are unreliable, and they vary widely from year to year. Peyton Manning reportedly made $13 million from endorsements in 2012, while brother Eli took in about $8 million. Drew Brees of the Saints reportedly made nearly $8 million, while the Patriots' Tom Brady earned $4 million. Clearly, quarterbacks are the valued property—especially white, good-looking quarterbacks playing for
successful teams. Other top players cash in big, but not nearly at this level (e.g., premier receiver Larry Fitzgerald, $1.5 million; top running back Adrian Peterson, $1 million). And occasionally the financial sun shines on lower-echelon players, who, because of their position, team, notoriety, good looks, or good fortune, command hefty endorsement fees (e.g., much-maligned quarterback Mark Sanchez—formerly with the New York Jets, now with the Philadelphia Eagles—makes $1 million). Endorsement money for most other NFL players pales in comparison. Top-flight players (Pro Bowlers and players with contracts in the league's top 100) may make between $200,000 and $1 million, but most NFL players are fortunate to pick up a few thousand here and there, mostly from local media advertising deals.
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Players may also pick up “pocket money” by signing autographs and appearing at card and memorabilia shows and other special promotions, but these, too, generate substantially less income than most players make on their NFL contracts.

For the top players, the financial view is impressive. Even the “middle class”—those near the average—are sitting pretty. Financial circumstances for the players near the bottom of NFL rosters aren't quite as lucrative, but even there, compensation is generous by everyday standards. The 2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NFL and NFLPA set minimum salary limits, based on length of service in the league, at the following figures for the 2013 season:
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While these minimum levels are a far cry from what elite players make, even the last rookie on the roster makes good money.

But before we're overly awed by these figures, we need to examine the structure of NFL contracts and salaries to better understand how monies are actually distributed. Things may not be as impressive as they seem. First of all, NFL players make
far less
than their counterparts in the NBA or MLB, even though NFL revenues far surpass their competitors'. In 2011, the average salary in the NBA was $5.15 million, while MLB players averaged $3.31 million for the same year.
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Second, players' salaries vary widely according to position, time in the league, and other circumstances over which players have little control. NFL quarterbacks average nearly $4 million a season, and defensive ends $2.6 million. Average positional salaries drop off considerably from there: defensive tackles, wide receivers, linebackers, offensive linemen, and safeties average around $1.8 million, followed by cornerbacks, kickers, and punters ($1.7 million), running backs ($1.6 million), and tight ends ($1.4 million).
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There is, of course, considerable variation within positions. Top-flight left tackles, for example, command far more than their offensive-line colleagues. In assessing salaries across the league, it's important to bear in mind that only a relative few players at key positions pull down astronomical salaries.

What Is an “Average” Salary?

To properly evaluate these salary figures, we also need to understand how “averages” are figured, and what these “averages” actually represent. The simple calculation of an arithmetic “mean” salary—the average most frequently reported—divides total player compensation by the total number of players. But determining the total compensation pool and the number of players who actually share it can be problematic. Each team has a 53-player roster, but more than 53 players occupy roster spots during any season, including players on injured reserve (IR), the practice squad, the physically unable to perform (PUP) list, suspended players, and players added to rosters for partial seasons. Thus, the first uncertainty is how many players are actually figured into an average. Secondly, each team has a 2013 salary cap of $123 million. Some of this will be considered
“dead money”—money that has been paid or is contractually obligated to players no longer on the roster. So, it's not certain that the average salary for any particular year is based on the actual salary cap figure. But if we take the simplest scenario and divided the 2013 cap allotment by 53, we end up with a
mean
salary of $2.3 million per player. That, however, is notably higher than what
most
NFL players actually make.
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Statisticians routinely note that the mean is disproportionately influenced by extreme values in the distribution of values from which it is calculated. Toss Microsoft's Bill Gates into the calculation of the mean income of your neighborhood, and
everyone
living in the neighborhood becomes—
on average
—a multimillionaire, at least statistically speaking. In most measures of income or wealth, there's a lower limit below which one can't drop—zero—but the sky is the limit at the upper end. So, in the NFL, the highest values (Aaron Rodgers' and Joe Flacco's $20 million a year salaries) “pull up the average,” so to speak. To take this into account, statisticians typically use a different average to summarize earnings—the “median.” The median is the middle value in the entire distribution, when the values are arranged from highest to lowest. For the NFL, the median salary would be the middle salary among all players, which is currently estimated at around $770,000.
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Half the players make more than this; half the players make less. Note that this average is well over a million dollars
less
than the mean that's usually reported.

Because the number of players actually included in the calculation of the median is also problematic, the reported $770,000 may also be misleading. A quick look at the Green Bay Packers' roster in October 2012 showed that 62 players were being paid at the time, including those on the practice squad and on IR, but not including players on the PUP list or already released. Using this base number (and not, say, the 53 players then on the active roster), the median Packers salary was approximately $640,000 at that time. This figure turns out to be very close to the average
minimum
base salary for a player who has been in the league for the overall career average of 3.5 years.
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This may, in fact, be a good approximation of what players across the board actually make. Many
players occupying roster spots make the minimum
or less
(given partial seasons on the roster). As many commentators have noted over the years, there's a very small “middle class” in the NFL; a relatively few stars make most of the money, while a large portion of the players make close to the minimum.
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In light of this, the typical player since 2010 might have made a bit over $2 million total football income if he'd played the average number of years in an NFL career. This amount would be somewhat greater if the player were on the active roster for the entire time and if he received signing bonuses or contracts for more than the minimum base salary.
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Many starters would have made considerably more, but not many would have approached an average of $2 million per season (the purported NFL yearly average), or $7 million total for 3.5 years. Fringe players, those not on the roster for all games—those figuratively hanging on by their fingernails—might have made considerably less. Some estimates suggest that around 20 percent of players on NFL rosters make the league minimum salary for their entire tenure in the NFL.
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While this is a lot of money to earn before the age of 26 or 27, it's a far cry from what the public often believes NFL players make.