New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is apparently dissatisfied with the way NFL players are currently being paid. After winning offensive rookie of the year and appearing on this years madden 16 cover Odell Beckham decided to voice his opinion about wanting an increase pay.
“I think that we should make more money, personally,” Beckham told The Huffington Post.
Now obviously after only entering his second season Beckham will have to wait another 4 years until his rookie deal expires, a deal that guarantees him 10.4 million dollars. Beckham’s main argument was that NFL players should receive a higher income than basketball or baseball players because their sport is more physical. NFL players often times have shorter careers for that very reason.
“I understand that basketball plays 80-something games, baseball plays this many games, soccer plays that many games, but this is a sport that’s most-watched in America,” he said. “A sport where there’s more injuries. There’s more collisions.
“It’s not even a full-contact sport, I would call it a full-collision sport. You have people running who can run 20 miles per hour and they’re running downhill to hit you, and you’re running 18 miles per hour. That’s a car wreck.
“It’s just the careers are shorter. There’s injuries that you have after you leave the game, brain injuries, whatever it is, nerve injuries. And it’s just something that I feel as if there’s no way someone who — even if they did their three or four years in the league — should have to worry about money for the rest of their lives.”
Luckily Beckham was drafted in the first round so he in fact does make over the average salary. According to Forbes the average salary was $2 million in 2013, while the league minimum in 2014 was $420,000. The purpose of the rookie scale is to give more money to veteran players who play out their rookie contracts. Nevertheless Beckham is still in favor of some kind of change.
“I understand we have more players, but look, there has to be some way to balance that out,”.
Obviously there are opportunities to brand yourself off the field, yet Odell may in fact be onto something. Then again is it really fair that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made more than 44 million dollars last season; he didn’t even have to play a snap in the league to earn that! Then again Beckham could have been destined to be in the military as we are thankful for those men and women who fight everyday for far less cash than what they are truly owed.
