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Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

This x1000000.

He's a generational talent who signed a $30 million rookie contract.

I know guys who played in the NFL and they got paid a sliver of that, at best. They are out of the league. 99% of guys who make it aren't Saquon Barkley. Shit, 99% of guys in his position aren't at his level. RBs do not last at the NFL level for very long. There's always some young new hotshot out of the college game who is faster, younger, and not beat up.

The big issue is that most of those guys spent their entire lives to that point to play in the NFL. They didn't challenge themselves in high school or college from an academic standpoint - they focused on football. They took home through that 3 year rookie deal MAYBE $200k-300k total after tax, outside training expenses, agent expenses, etc.

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> They didn't challenge themselves in high school or college from an academic standpoint...

A slightly different perspective: they weren't challenged academically, primarily because they excelled at footballs/sports. I had a friend in high school (back in the 80s) that was, coincidentally, also a star running back, broke rushing records, played for a good college, all that. However, he never made it to the NFL. He coasted through high school because everyone wanted him on the field and didn't care at all about his education. College was even worse. He told me for most semesters he didn't even know what his classes were; he was there only to play football, and that was made very clear to him from the start.

It's easy to point the finger, like, "You should've challenged yourself in high school!", and that's true. But for a lot of these kids, "the system" either simply looks the other way or actively discourages them from education.

Fortunately for my friend he landed a job in the football program at a small, private college, where he also was able to actually attend classes and eventually get a degree. I think he's retired now, though.

Perhaps I should have worded my statement differently - it's not that the players deliberately didn't challenge themselves, it was more that they were "encouraged" to focus on football. Especially in big time high school and college programs where there's just too much money and prestige involved for anyone to rock the boat or, god forbid take anything off the main focus of football.

For some players, too, they know the allure of the NFL can outweigh anything else, especially if they can run like the wind and ain't too smart but come from a really poor background. The school might know football is their best way out. Sad but true.

How is that possible when minimum rookie deal in the NFL is 4 million over 4 years?

You’re not drafted and languish on a practice squad.

Except for those drafted in higher rounds, most of the years on these rookie contracts are not actually guaranteed. Also, you can expect to lose maybe 15-20% of your roster to injury over the course of the season, so teams are often signing guys from the practice squad to weekly contracts. Practice squad salary is like 200-400k per season depending on tenure.

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