5 ms·

Apart from the few star players, professional football doesn't pay that well. Certainly not enough to make up for it being a pretty short career. I'm not sure

by vacri 11y ago

Apart from the few star players, professional football doesn't pay that well. Certainly not enough to make up for it being a pretty short career. I'm not sure what it is today, but "roster fillers" in the NFL were only making $50k/year not all that long ago. The average career length is 6 years according to the NFL, and 3.3 years according to the players' union. Decent players will make over 100k, but it's still a pretty short career.

nkurz 11y ago
How long ago were you thinking? I think your suggested salary numbers are off by about a factor of 10. The average salary is about $2 million/year. The median salary is about $1 million/year. The minimum salary for a first year player is over $400,000. Here's an article with lots of details for 5 years ago: http://work.chron.com/much-money-nfl-player-make-year-2377.html http://work.chron.com/much-money-nfl-player-make-year-2377.h... And here are links to team-by-team numbers: http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/ http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/
- vacri 11y ago
  It was a while back, yes. It looks like the players have had a significant win in the meantime - minimum player salary increases by $15k/year for the next four years: http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum-salaries-for-2015-and-the-veteran-cap-benefit-rule/ http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum-salaries-for-2015-an... $400k for a 3-year career is a lot better than the picture I was painting, thanks for the correction. edit: link fix
  - nkurz 11y ago
    Thanks, that's a better link than I found. It also shows that the minimum combined salary over 3 years for a player starting in 2016 would be $450K + $540K + $630K = $1.6M. Even assuming that they had no other employment for the rest of their life, that's significantly greater than the current median lifetime earnings for college graduates: http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-biggest-lifetime-earnings-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-biggest-lifeti...

by vacri 11y ago

nkurz 11y ago

How long ago were you thinking? I think your suggested salary numbers are off by about a factor of 10. The average salary is about $2 million/year. The median salary is about $1 million/year. The minimum salary for a first year player is over $400,000. Here's an article with lots of details for 5 years ago: http://work.chron.com/much-money-nfl-player-make-year-2377.html http://work.chron.com/much-money-nfl-player-make-year-2377.h... And here are links to team-by-team numbers: http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/ http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/

vacri 11y ago
It was a while back, yes. It looks like the players have had a significant win in the meantime - minimum player salary increases by $15k/year for the next four years: http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum-salaries-for-2015-and-the-veteran-cap-benefit-rule/ http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum-salaries-for-2015-an... $400k for a 3-year career is a lot better than the picture I was painting, thanks for the correction. edit: link fix
- nkurz 11y ago
  Thanks, that's a better link than I found. It also shows that the minimum combined salary over 3 years for a player starting in 2016 would be $450K + $540K + $630K = $1.6M. Even assuming that they had no other employment for the rest of their life, that's significantly greater than the current median lifetime earnings for college graduates: http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-biggest-lifetime-earnings-2014-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-biggest-lifeti...