This may be a crack in the armor of the incredible growth of salaries in professional sports, or it may not be. But the idea of pay for performance is getting a little tryout in the National Football League.
As part of the last collective bargaining agreement with the players union, the NFLPA, a performance-based pay pool (PBP) was set up.
The idea was that bonuses would be paid at the end of the year to players who had out performed their contract. For example, a player on a rookie contract who started 16 games and performed well, was in line for a bonus. Last year, the NFL paid out $116.3 million. Since the program began, the NFL has paid out almost $1 billion in rewards.
Now the union is trying to adjust the program to have separate categories, one for rookies and one for veterans. The idea of the two pools seems to be to increase the rewards for veteran players who outperform expectations.
Last year, the second biggest bonus went to Corey Linsley, the fifth round rookie who started at center for the Packers. He got $339,566. David Bakhtiari was the top Packers veteran at $263,333.
This whole thing is clearly not starting a stampede to institute pay-for-play salary structures in all of sports. But, who knows? It might be at least a small step in that direction.
Sports like golf and tennis have been just fine with players getting paid for how they play. Sure, there are guaranteed endorsement deals, but the biggest money either comes or doesn’t based on how the athlete performs.
It would be relatively easy to have this kind of pay structure in baseball and basketball that have such definitive statistical judgements. It would be a little harder in football. But in this day of technological innovation, it would be relatively easy to come up with a rating scheme for every position.
The numbers we are talking about are almost mind-boggling.
The National Basketball Association has the highest average salary in the world at $4.5 million for last year. The cricket league in India is second at $4.2 million, and major league baseball is third at $3.9 million. The average NFL salary is just over $2 million, good for eighth place, behind hockey and a whole bunch of soccer leagues.
It’s going to be interesting to see if the union is successful and if it is, there may well be more focus on trying to reward players for the way they play, pretty much the way the rest of the world does things.
With a history in Milwaukee stretching back decades, Dave tries to bring a unique perspective to his writing, whether it's sports, politics, theater or any other issue.
He's seen Milwaukee grow, suffer pangs of growth, strive for success and has been involved in many efforts to both shape and re-shape the city. He's a happy man, now that he's quit playing golf, and enjoys music, his children and grandchildren and the myriad of sports in this state. He loves great food and hates bullies and people who think they are smarter than everyone else.
This whole Internet thing continues to baffle him, but he's willing to play the game as long as OnMilwaukee.com keeps lending him a helping hand. He is constantly amazed that just a few dedicated people can provide so much news and information to a hungry public.
Despite some opinions to the contrary, Dave likes most stuff. But he is a skeptic who constantly wonders about the world around him. So many questions, so few answers.
