620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Before today's show, two quick things. Number one, on February 13th, we are putting on a live Freakonomics radio show in Los Angeles. Come see us. As of this recording, there are some tickets left, but not many. So don't dawdle. Go to Freakonomics.com slash live shows, one word, to get tickets. And number two, we need your voice for an episode that we are in the middle of producing. It's about sludge, not the physical sludge that gunks up machinery and things like that. I am talking about the administrative and bureaucratic sludge that can make it hard to do simple things like cancel a subscription or pick the best health care coverage or sign up for some government service.
If you have a good sludge story or example, we want to hear it. Use your phone to record a short voice memo and send it to radio at Freakonomics.com. Please include your name, where you live, what you do, and tell us what's your sludge story. How did you respond to this sludge? And do you think it was accidental sludge or intentional? Make sure you record your voice memo in a quiet place. And again, send it to radio at freakonomics.com. Thanks muchly. And now here is today's episode. 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.
Big opening for Tony Dorsett. Look out, he's got great speed. Tony Dorsett was my favorite player. I had the uniform, the helmet. The running backs were bigger stars during my childhood than the quarterbacks.
My favorite player of all time was Barry Sanders. The day that he retired, I remember crying.
I had a Ricky Waters jersey when he was with the Eagles, actually. I wore it on the first day of school, I think of first or second grade.
The three men we just heard from, we will meet them later. Two of them are former NFL running backs themselves, and the other has represented many running backs as an agent. 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 called Confessions of a Hero Worshipper. Like I said, a little bit obsessed. 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?
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