This off-season, a new debate has sprung up on sporting shows all around the country. While Derek Carr became the NFL’s highest paid player with a $125,000,000 extension, he’s still not making as much as some NBA players. It’s not fair that NFL players make less than NBA players, especially when they have a much more physical job, right? NFL players, like Terrance Knighton, have complained that NFL players deserve to be paid more. Here’s why that’s just not feasible.
The Disconnect Between NFL and NBA Contracts
Rosters
It’s absolutely ridiculous for anyone to think the contracts should be the same for NFL and NBA teams. The first reason? That a NFL team is made up of 53 players while a NBA team is only made up of 15. It’s easier to pay 15 players a lot than it is to pay 53, especially when there’s a significantly bigger gap between say a starting quarterback and a special teamer than there is between the starting five and the worst person on a NBA team.
If you have a competitive NFL team, you probably have a franchise quarterback, a couple of good offensive linemen, a number one receiver, and a pass rusher, right? Imagine paying all of them NBA money. What would the salary cap have to be to honor those contracts? And what would role players have to make? Frankly, this isn’t even the most obvious reason.
Games
We’ve established that NFL rosters are significantly bigger than NBA rosters, right? Well what about the schedules? After all, NFL teams only play 16 games in a regular season. NBA teams? Play 82. So you’re paying players to play almost time times more games.
Let’s go back to Derek Carr for a second. The biggest payday of his career will come in 2018, where he’ll make $25,000,000. In 2018, Carr will make $1,562,500 per game. Now imagine that Carr made the same amount of money per game, stretched out over 82 games. With that, his contract extension wouldn’t have been worth 125,000,000, it would’ve been worth $640,625,000 with an average of $128,125,000 per season. Yup, Carr would be averaging more money per season than LeBron James‘ entire contract.
Ridiculous
Finally, this is by far, the dumbest argument that has ever been made in the history of arguments. People that makes millions of dollars playing a game are upset that people who play a different game make more money? That’s not to take away from the incredible work, luck, and sacrifice it takes to be a professional athlete, only that it’s not exactly digging ditches.
