NFL Player's Wage Differences

A common Comparison I see often is the military wage vs. an NFL player’s wage. Many people are frustrated with the difference and believe either NFL players should make less or military personnel should make more. Through statistics and my own experiences I can say that as far as your wage goes you would make more money in your lifetime working for the military than you would in the NFL. This of course goes for the average NFL player. This is in no way made to disrespect or dishonor anyone who has worked in the military. This is purely designed to inform those of you that may believe that the military wage is too low or that the NFL wage is too high. NFL players are not making too much money compared to the military because of the benefits

However, I look it that you’re not going to be paying a kid without a college education thousands of dollars. The average recruitment age for the military is 19 years old and the base pay is 18,802.80 (Army Base Pay and Basic Pay Chart). Which is low compared to the average wage for a 20-24 year old, they make $25,636 a year (How Do You Compare? Average Salaries By Age and Occupation – NerdWallet). Looking from the outside in that seems ridiculous, but that doesn’t include the cost of living. When you are in the military you can live on the base for free essentially, so there would be no cost for living. But for the regular person they only get 5,442 dollars per year after you take out the cost of living. My uncle was in the military and he is a perfect example for the average wage until retirement. He joined when he was 18 and retired when he was 43. He worked up the ranks and became a major; by the time he retired he was making 90,320 dollars a year. His mean income over 25 years would be 54,400 dollars per year. 54,400 over 25 years is 1.36 million dollars. With the military when listed about you get 50 percent of your last pay plus 2.5 percent for every additional year after 20 years served. He would be earning 62.5 percent of the 90,320 dollars a year for the rest of his life. This is 56,450 dollars a year, now doing this for the next 12 years minus the cost of living would give us 435,072 dollars. That added to

Well they are actually about the same when playing football 1 in every 100,000 participants die on the field (Barry P. Boden). In the military it is actually a little bit higher at 1 in every 107,692 people die. This is not statistically significant, but it is important to note that the fatality rates are about the same between the two professions. Why should an athlete that has worked their whole life to get to the point where then are now be paid less. At the end of the day all professional athletes are not only athletes, but they are entertainers. No one every makes a comparison between how much Brad Pitt makes and how much a military private makes. It is unfair to single out professional athletes, specifically NFL players. A question to those who believe the military should be paid more. How much more? And are you willing to pay for it? Let’s say we would pay every single military person as much as the average NFL player 860,000 dollars a year. That is going to come from the tax payers. Let’s see just how much more we are going to have to pay per year for the military. There are about 320 million people in the U.S. of those let’s say 55 percent of them pay taxes. 176 million people will pay for the new wage increase for the military. There are 1.4 million people in the military, and all of them are now getting 860,000 dollars.