Comments on: Why Do MLB Players Have More Power Than NFL Players?

By: William Zabka

William Zabka — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:24:24 +0000

pawnking made an important point regarding the length of the players’ playing careers. Further to that point is the higher frequency of injuries in the NFL. When you factor in a short playing career, along with the chance of injury, players simply cannot afford to sit out a couple of years to strike in order to gain more 3-5 years down the line. The NFL knows this.

Further, the NFL has done an unbelievable job of marketing the NFL. MLB has done an average job of marketing its team and its players, and a poor job of marketing MLB.

By: David Pinto

David Pinto — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:29:46 +0000

I think you nailed it. If you have a big offensive line, any competent skill players can succeed in the NFL. I learned this early, when Craig Morton sucked for the Giants, then took the Broncos to the Super Bowl. Give a QB enough time, and he’ll complete a pass.

But if you first baseman doesn’t hit, it’s all his fault.

By: DanC

DanC — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:37:00 +0000

Baseball is less of a team sport with the marginal benefit of a star player in baseball having more impact.

The owners in football don’t have to deal with a Yankees type owner i.e an owner willing to break the bank to produce a winner.

Related to that, the marginal return for investing in a player is lower in football. Revenue sharing and salary caps in football makes heavy investing in football players less attractive and riskier. If I invest a lot in a football player, and I make a bad investment, football teams are trapped with the player. A team like the Yankees just forget about it and move on.

By: kehrsam

kehrsam — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:05:32 +0000

I think the fact that baseball is essentially played out in a batter-pitcher confrontation makes it much more personal to the average fan than the NFL’s 22-man scrum. We can check this by postulating that quarterbacks and wide receivers (and a very few cornerbacks) will be treated better in the salary structure than equally-valuable linemen and linebackers, simply because they are the guys that get to go one on one and get more exposure. I don’t have the data, but i would be very surprised if this were not true.

By: pawnking

pawnking — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:01:08 +0000

The much longer playing career of the MLB-er plays a huge role. Even the best NFL players knows they have a very short shelf life. By the time the average non-QB is 30 or so, he’s on borrowed time. Therefore he knows holding out a year could hurt his income in a dramatic way.

In baseball, the best players know they have peak earning years of 10 years, 15 years, or more. Therefore losing 1 year of revenue is much less damaging to them financially.

It would be a worthy study to examine the effect of a one year strike on the total revenue of an NFL player vs. a baseball player to quantify my illustration above.

By: Jon Keeperman

Jon Keeperman — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:09:22 +0000

A few questions: How does the preponderance of NFL signing bonuses play into these comparisons? I suspect NFL players still earn way below Major Leaguers even with those bonuses factored in, but don’t signing bonuses mitigate some of the discrepancies between the two leagues, particularly when we talk about guaranteed money? And also, how do the leagues’ pension payouts compare?

By: Marc Schneider

Marc Schneider — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:51:24 +0000

I think another factor is that the NFL is more capable of absorbing a strike than MLB because it’s the more popular sport. As you pointed out, people are willing to watch replacement players in football when they never would in baseball. Plus, I think the Marvin Miller and owner incompetence factors are much more important. I really wonder whether the baseball players would have gotten free agency when they did if not for the arbitrator decisions re McNally and Messersmith. Gene Upshaw simply isn’t in the same league. And the length of career factor is also important. If a football players loses a year, it’s much more detrimental to his career than to a baseball player, who typically plays longer.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:38:44 +0000

The Bill James argument was in the 1988 Abstract, page 17, in an article called “Revolution”.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:59:03 +0000

Raw numbers seems to matter as well. There are a lot more football players on a roster and in the league (figure 32×60 vs. 30×25). It is more difficult to organize and manage the organization of football players. The solidarity of the baseball union is in part about maintaining not only the picket line, but the decision to test free agency, and of the isolation of players who have challenged the union. That’s a lot harder to enforce when you are trying to keep track of more than 2x the members.