Is There Life After Football? (9 page)

Generational Differences

Today's NFL retirees span several historical eras and generations of players. A retiree who played before the 1990s probably didn't earn very much—certainly not what players make today. Several factors contribute to the generational differences. In the early 1960s, burgeoning TV contracts and competition from the upstart American Football League prompted a significant leap in players' salaries—especially for the stars. The competition provided by the short-lived United States Football League from 1983 to 1985 offered a similar salary bump, but again, top-echelon players reaped most of the benefits.
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The most significant factor in advancing players' salaries, however, was the advent of unrestricted free agency in 1993. The NFLPA has struggled for decades over players' rights and benefits, winning incremental gains along the way. But
the 1993 CBA that instituted unrestricted free agency opened the salary floodgates.
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Accounts of the historical progression of NFL salaries are both inconsistent and sketchy. There's no definitive record of average league salaries over the decades. Nevertheless, a brief informal history of NFL salaries provides a sense for the differing financial circumstances for players who have played and retired in different eras.

THE EARLY YEARS

In 1956, the minimum NFL salary was reported as $5,000.
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In 1957, Paul Hornung, Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner and the first pick in the 1957 draft, signed for $17,500 plus a $2,500 signing bonus. “That was more than many of the vets on the team were getting paid,” recounts his teammate Jim Taylor. A second round choice himself in 1958, Taylor signed for $9,500 plus a $1,000 bonus.
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Future Hall of Famer Willie Davis earned $6,800 a year playing for the Cleveland Browns in 1958. During his subsequent decade playing in Green Bay, Davis never made more than $50,000 a year.
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Among the NFL's older retirees, Will Siegel remembers what it was like during the 1950s:

We had to sign a paper [in 1959] that we wouldn't tell our teammates how much we made. Mason [a journeyman quarterback] made $8,500 and I made $8,000. My dad couldn't believe this. He said all the time he'd done in the steel mills and all that money he made in the tavern, and never made $8,000 a year.
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While financial circumstances were not flush in the early days, NFL players still made a decent, middle-class living. Siegel was the envy of his own hard-working father.

THE AFL ERA

With the American Football League's inaugural 1960 season, competition for players proved to be an instant bonanza for a few top-rated
draft choices and a select group of veterans who were willing to jump leagues. Billy Cannon, the 1959 Heisman Trophy winner, signed a $100,000 contract to play for the Houston Oilers, twice the amount the NFL was willing to pay him and five times as much as Hornung made just three years prior. Five years later, Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets for $427,000, the highest amount ever paid to a collegiate football player.
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With the bidding war in full swing, the next year Donny Anderson and Jim Grabowski signed with Green Bay for $600,000 and $400,000 respectively, and soon thereafter, the NFL agreed to merge with the AFL.
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While most of the benefits of the bidding war accrued to high-profile draft choices, players' salaries across the board edged upward during this era. By 1970, the average NFL salary was around $20,000. Michael Oriard, a second team All-America center at Notre Dame and fifth round draft choice of the Kansas City Chiefs, signed a three-year contract, totaling $55,000. Of course, this was actually a series of three one-year contracts for $15,000, $16,000, and $19,000, plus a $5,000 signing bonus.
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The average player salary rose to approximately $30,000 by 1974. By then, there was a $12,000 rookie minimum and a $13,000 veteran minimum. A teamster of this era, Oriard notes, might make around $10,000 annually. By 1977, the average salary rose to $55,300, with a minimum of $14,500.
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A decade later, second round draft choice Darryl Gatlin recalls playing his rookie year for a base salary of $125,000 when the highest-paid player on his team made $450,000.
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THE FREE AGENT ERA

The financial landscape changed dramatically when the 1993 CBA granted players the right to free agency under particular circumstances. The benefits were immediate and striking. The average unrestricted free agent signed for $1.04 million; restricted free agents averaged $780,000. Reggie White signed a four-year, $17 million contract. Whereas no KC Chief offensive lineman—even the All-Pros—made $50,000 in 1973, 25 years later, several offensive linemen across the league were making over
$6 million a year. By 2000, the minimum first-year salary had risen to $225,000 with a $525,000 minimum for six-year vets. The league average was $1.1 million. By 2005, the mean NFL salary had risen to $1.4 million; the median was $569,000.
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Clearly, compensation is much better today than it was for players who retired before the 1990s. Those players were often in financial situations similar to school teachers, auto workers, insurance salesmen, and shop keepers. Players lucky enough to come along after 1993, however, were often “millionaires”—at least in the sense that that they likely earned over a million dollars if they had average careers. While the financial parameters of the bubble were not nearly as opulent for old-timers, even those back in the day had it relatively good. But for NFL players since free agency, the bubble has become something of a Garden of Eden, snakes and all.

No Guarantees

Perhaps the most important factor affecting player compensation is the NFL's longstanding practice of not guaranteeing long-term contracts.
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Unlike the NBA or MLB, the only fully assured money in NFL contracts comes from signing bonuses. A player may be released at any time, whereupon the player's contract terminates and the team and/or league has only limited financial obligations (e.g., severance benefits). In effect, multiyear NFL contracts are a series of one-year contracts. This means that many of the dollar figures thrown around when hyping a player's contract bear only a loose relationship to what the player may actually be paid.
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Looking at Aaron Rodgers' contract, which is touted as a five-year, $110 million deal, Rodgers is actually guaranteed only $40 million—the amount he will be paid in 2013 by way of salary and signing bonus. To illustrate what can become of non-guaranteed contracts, consider what
happened to Nnamdi Asomugha. In 2011, the Philadelphia Eagles signed Asomugha to a five-year, $60 million contract, with only $25 million guaranteed through signing bonuses, special provisions, and his first-year salary.
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Disappointed with Asomugha's performance, the Eagles released him in the spring of 2013, before the beginning of the 2013 season when Asomugha was scheduled to make $15 million. In all, Asomugha made less than half of the money that was written into his deal. In contrast, NBA and MLB contracts are almost fully guaranteed, meaning players will receive the amount indicated in their contracts, barring a relatively limited set of circumstances that could void them. Thus, when Alex Rodriguez signed his ten-year, $275 million contract with the New York Yankees in 2008, he was assured to receive every penny of the $275 million (except for the year he has been suspended for violating league drug policies). But should an NFL player suffer serious injury, he could be released and receive only a fraction of the remaining money on his contract.

Non-guaranteed contracts almost always work against players' financial interests. They give teams the option of releasing a player if they no longer think he is worth the money. Or they can use the threat of release to coerce players into financial concessions—to renegotiate their contracts. This happened twice to Packers linebacker A.J. Hawk. In 2006, Hawk—a first round draft choice—signed a six-year, $37.5 contract, making him,
on average
, one of the league's highest-paid linebackers. He became a solid starter, but failed to live up to the “big play” expectations the Packers held for him. From the team's standpoint, the $10 million Hawk was scheduled to receive in 2011 was excessive. Early in 2011, the team released Hawk, but resigned him three days later to a restructured contract with terms more favorable to the Packers ($33.75 million for an additional five years). Later, in 2013, with renewed threats to release Hawk, the Packers again convinced him to renegotiate his contract, getting him to forego $10 million for the 2013 season and accept a restructuring that will pay him $10.6 million over the final three years of his contract, compared with the $17.85 million originally stipulated in
his 2011 contract. Thus, regardless of specific details, a player's long-term contract frequently overstates its actual value.
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We got a playbook for on the field, but they gave us one for off the field too
.
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NFL teams manage their investments carefully. They leave little to chance when it comes to maximizing player performance, subjecting players to highly regimented, rigidly structured working conditions that belie the public's perception of NFL players' lavish, freewheeling lives. It's a continuation of the pattern established in college where players increasingly cede control of their lives to the football enterprise.

But, once in the NFL, players now have money in their pockets—typically more than they've ever seen in their lives—and a small measure of time that's actually their own. They're “not in Kansas anymore,” both literally and figuratively,
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but unlike their college days, they've got plenty of cash to spend and more opportunities to spend it. Younger players begin to exercise adult freedoms and discretion, and, while teams want their organizations staffed by mature, responsible individuals, they also believe that winning requires full commitment, round-the-clock discipline, and the subordination of individuality. Thus, the NFL is vigilant in structuring players' lives, even as players try to “stretch their wings.”

Both sides agree that excellence on the field demands full commitment off it. To that end, preparation and training consume almost all of players' time in-season, and much of it during the off season. It may not be 24/7 for 12 months a year, but it comes close, as George Koonce recalls:

In season, players went to work at the stadium around 7:15 a.m. for the first meeting and worked until around 5:00 p.m. They saw doctors and trainers, participated in strength and conditioning activities, studied film, reviewed their playbook, then they practiced from 11:00 to 11:45 on the field, and then ate lunch
at noon. The second practice started at 1:45 and would go until 3:45, after which we would shower, then study practice film to watch what we did in practice so we could make corrections. Film study lasted an hour or a little longer. If you were injured, you had to fit in treatment and rehab somewhere, sometime before or after meetings and practice
.
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There's little time left outside the team's jurisdiction. Players typically get Tuesdays off, but many of them show up for injury treatment, light workouts, and film study anyway. While details change from player to player, team to team, and generation to generation, the story remains largely the same. It may not have been true 50 years ago, but today the NFL is a full-time job.
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This is true of the ever-shortening off season as well. Training camp starts in July and preseason games begin in August. The regular season runs from September to January, and the postseason can extend well into February. That leaves four months of off season that are nevertheless filled with informal weightlifting and fitness regimens, injury rehabilitation, workouts and rehab at the team's training facilities, “voluntary” organized team activities (OTAs) that all but a few veterans attend, and mandatory “mini-camps.” “Organization” is a hallmark of the NFL, so there's little flexibility. Schedules are crafted, posted, and enforced. Even seemingly informal activities like meals and conversations with representatives of the media are timed down to the minute. Koonce recalls the schedule for a typical day during an
off-season
mini-camp: