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Comment by ralmidani | Hacker News Reader

An unfortunate aspect of our culture: he probably would have had more fame and wealth had he stuck to football.

At least for Urschel, he has a reputation for not being a big spender: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/03/nfls-john-urschel-lived-on-2...

He didn't live on a modest $25,000 a year and drive a used car "because I'm frugal or trying to save for some big purchase," Urschel said. "It's because the things I love the most in this world (reading math, doing research, playing chess) are very, very inexpensive."

I don't think that's true. He played offensive line which isn't a high profile position and he wasn't a star. I think he's much more famous due to the Math/NFL combo than he would be in either alone.

Starting offensive linemen are among the highest paid players in the NFL and have the longest careers on average, some spanning more than 15 years.

Dallas is paying its O-Line $41,174,860 this year, $4,574,984 per player on average (including all 9 starters and backups), which is 22.25% of the salary cap.

NFL Offensive Line Spending by Team https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/positional/offensive-line/

And the Giants just made Nate Solder the highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL, "a contract worth $62 million — an average of $15.5 million per year — with a $34.9 million guaranteed."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2018/03/14/nate-...

The cited article above notes he earned $1.8m over three years: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/nfl-player-who-retired-to-pu...

I was strictly talking about fame.

Minimum annual salary in the NFL is $480,000.

Average tenure in the NFL is something like 3 years. Not saying that 1.5mm minimum isn't a lot, of course.

For many, if not most, of the players it must be one year and out ...

(Simple case: ten guys, two hang out ten years, the other eight share ten years of NFL ...)

People who go to grad school in math aren't really motivated by fame and wealth.

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