Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
They were the N.F.L.’s biggest stars, with paychecks to match. Now their salaries are near the bottom, and their careers are shorter than ever. How did they fall so far — and can they make a comeback?
The National Football League, a phenomenally successful piece of the sports-and-entertainment industry, is largely built around the forward pass. That’s when the quarterback, the star of the show, throws the ball downfield to one of his sprinting receivers, who tries to catch the ball and sprint even further down the field. This can be a very exciting thing to watch. In recent years, the passing game has gotten even more exciting, and more sophisticated, and it has helped drive the league’s massive growth. But if you ask football fans of a certain age who they idolized when they were kids — it probably wasn’t a wide receiver, or even a quarterback; it was probably a running back.
The running back I loved as a kid was Franco Harris, of the Pittsburgh Steelers. To be honest, I was a little obsessed with Franco. We don’t need to get into the details here, but I did once write a book about him, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper. I liked everything about Franco — the way he carried himself off the field, but especially how he ran. Some running backs, like Jim Brown, were known for their power, for running people over. Others, like Gale Sayers, were so fast and graceful that it was hard to get a hand on them. Franco was somewhere in the middle: strong but elusive, a darter and a dodger.
In football, every play is a miniature drama, packed into just a few seconds — 22 athletes moving at once, as complicated as a blueprint, as brutal as war, as delicate as ballet. A passing play is a bit of a magic trick: the quarterback and receiver try to trick the downfield defenders into being in the wrong place at the right time. A running play is more predictable, since the running back has to get through a wall of massive defenders. But if he does, and breaks free into open space — that is a special kind of thrill.
Back when Franco Harris was in the league, and for a long time after, many of the game’s biggest stars were running backs. And they were paid accordingly. If you go back 30 years, and take the average salary of the top players by position, running backs ranked second, just behind quarterbacks. This year, running backs ranked 13th. So what happened? Everyone knows the N.F.L. has become much more pass-happy these last few decades but still, how did running backs fall so far?
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one with these questions. Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard and a friend of Freakonomics, recently wrote a Wall Street Journal column called “The Economics of Running Backs.” I asked Roland if he would sit for an interview to help answer those questions. He had another idea that he insisted would be even more fun: he proposed to co-host the episode.
So on this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio, he and I team up to explore the decline of the running back. We spoke with one of the analytics gurus who sparked the revolution. We heard a sports agent explain why the position is so difficult. And, of course, we talked to a few running backs, who told us what it’s like to put your body on the line for your team … and watch the quarterback get all the credit.
The upcoming Super Bowl LIX will feature Saquon Barkley, a running back who had a historically great season, and is major reason that his Philadelphia Eagles made it to the Super Bowl to face the Kansas City Chiefs. Does this mean we’re looking at a running back renaissance? Probably not — but the Franco Harris fan in me hopes so.
You can hear this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio, “Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?”, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A full transcript is available on our website.
I want to also let you know that we are putting on a live show in Los Angeles on Thursday, February 13th at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Endeavor CEO Ariel Emanuel will join me on stage, along with documentarian R.J. Cutler. For tickets, go to freakonomics.com/liveshows. A portion of our proceeds will go to wildfire relief efforts. I’ll be there — and I hope you will too.
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