Full Episode
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and I thought you might need a bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio for the upcoming Super Bowl. We recently put out a new episode about the economics of the running back position in the NFL. This episode, which we first published in 2023, looked at NFL teams as employers.
We've updated facts and figures as necessary, although the team rankings we discuss are from the 2023 report card. So stick around to the end to hear what changed in 2024. As always, thanks for listening. Hi, what can I get for you today? Maybe even something like this. Stand clear of the closing doors, please. What you probably don't think about when I say workplace environment is this.
But if you are one of the roughly 2,000 men who play in the National Football League, that's your office. I mean, it's business. Let's not get it wrong. It's business. The NFL Players Association, or NFLPA, is the union that represents the players. And in 2023, they conducted their first ever employee survey about workplace conditions.
I would never have thought to ask, are there rats in your locker room? And they gave letter grades to each of the league's 32 teams.
This is really about, are we giving you the inputs you need to be as productive as possible?
The NFL is the richest and most successful sports league in history. Each team is worth at least $4 billion.
Nobody wants to be known as the cheapskate. Before, when it was rumored you were the cheapskate, it was harder to prove. Now there's data.
And what does the data have to say? Among U.S. employees in general, job satisfaction is higher than it's been in decades. How satisfied are NFL players? Now, you may be saying to yourself, who cares about the workplace environment of NFL players? They make so much money, the environment shouldn't matter.
Or you may say, pro football is so different from what I do for a living, there's no way I'm going to learn anything worthwhile from this. Well, if we have done our job in making this episode, you will. At the very least, with another NFL season in the books, you will learn which teams got the best grades and the worst. Never really heard of an F-minus before.
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