Did you know that the minimum wage in the NFL is $860,000 a year? That’s the minimum. See those guys standing around on the sidelines holding clipboards and not sweating or getting dirty? They’re racking up nearly 900 grand a year for that. See those guys high-five-ing the runner who just got his bell rung on that last hit. They are taking home more than the average plumber up in the nosebleed section made last year ($28,800). In fact, the minimum wager in the NFL is making more than 30 plumbers. Now you know why “Joe the Plumber” wanted to get into entertainment. If he could be 50% accurate on field goals, he might pull down a mil a year.
The minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25 an hour, or about $13,920 a year, if you can manage to get a full time job at minimum wage, which is unlikely. That is 62 times less than the bottom line NFL’er. The average U.S. household income is around $46,326. That’s the entire house, not just the one guy who is not snapping for punts or the dude who fumbled the touchdown run in the red zone.
The minimum for an NBA rookie who has not shot a basket yet is $457,588. If you have played for 5 years, the minimum is $959,111. For major league baseball, it is $400,000. Makes me want to do something I did for free as a child – play sports.
The average NFL ticket price is $75 or about $396.36 for a family of four (four tickets, two beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs, parking for one car, two programs or gameday magazines and two adult-sized caps).
Oddly, the average salary for a sports journalist is about $35,000. So when you see those sportscasters get all worked up, now you know why.
With unemployment at around 10% nationally, that means 30,500,000 people are fans of teams they can’t even afford to go see. Over 30 million. So when I see someone who earns about $10 an hour wearing the hat of a professional sports team where the lowest paid player makes nearly a million dollars a year, I wonder why we don’t just put uniforms on those guys who took millions in bonuses on Wall Street and make them rip out each other’s ACL’s from a thirty yard start?
