Darren Rovell – of CNBC — examined how much an NFL player gets paid for winning the Super Bowl. As I have noted before, professional athletes are paid for the regular season. For the playoffs, the players are paid according to the playoff bonus pool. And as Rovell notes below (where I re-posted his entire column), the bonus money pales in comparison to the top player’s regular season salaries. In other words, the playoffs aren’t really about money. This is really about the player’s competitive drive and love of the game.
Every year, Major League Baseball announces how much the World Series winners get in bonus money for the postseason. This past year, the San Francisco Giants, who beat the Rangers, made $317,631, assuming a player was awarded a full share.
How does that compare to what an NFL player makes? And how much do they get paid in the playoffs versus what they make for the regular season?
NFL players, who win the championship, actually make more if you factor it out on a per game basis than baseball players did this year.
Let’s take a Jets or Packers player for example, who each played an extra game because they played in the Wildcard. They made $19,000 each for the Wildcard game, $21,000 each for winning the Divisional Playoff Game and are guaranteed $38,000 for the Title Game. Should they win the Super Bowl, they’d make $83,000 (losers make $42,000).
So if the Jets or Packers win the Super Bowl, each player will get $161,000 for their playoff run. Break that down by game and it’s $40,250 per game. The Giants played 16 games to win the World Series, so they received $19,852 per game.
The four games of work for Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez or Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is only a portion of their normal game salary. Including the bye week, Mark Sanchez makes $1.52 million for four weeks of the regular season, while Rodgers makes $2.02 million for four games of the regular season.
That means if the Jets win he Super Bowl, Sanchez would only make 10.6 percent of what he would normally make for four regular season weeks versus the playoff weeks. If the Packers win the Super Bowl, Aaron Rodgers would only get paid 7.9 percent of what he would normally make for four regular season weeks versus the playoff weeks.
Of course, much of that could be made up with one blockbuster endorsement deal.
One last note… although the winning quarterback in the Super Bowl will earn significant money from endorsements, is this true of the losing quarterback? What about the quarterbacks that lose in the conference championships? If the Packers or Jets lose this weekend, they will still have played as many post-season games as the team that defeats them (and appears in the Super Bowl). But one suspects the endorsement deals for the losers this weekend aren’t really very good. And that is even more true for the players who are not the quarterback (or other stars on offense).
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
Tom Philpott
January 19, 2011
Say I’m a role player on a team that made several long runs in the playoffs: Sasha Vujačić, for example. Won’t that playoff success, the high profile of my deeds, add to my bargaining power and thus my salary? The effect may be much smaller for players perceived to be elite. Guys like Tracy McGrady and Chris Bosh got max deals without ever having had long playoff runs But for players perceived as role players, isn’t there an — admittedly hard to quantify — playoff effect? For example, didn’t his presence on the Orlando Magic Eastern Conference champion team likely added to Hedo Turkoglu’s deal? I’m not saying such an effect would rational; like fixating on scoring averages, it might by wholly irrational. But might it exist?
Matt
January 19, 2011
Tom’s point seems reasonable to me. People love to talk about “winners” and “losers.” I’m sure a lot of players have made money off of that argument.
Austin
January 19, 2011
I was going to say basically exactly what Tom did. To take it a bit further, on this blog there has been evidence posted that NCAA tournament success affects NBA draft position disproportionately. Since the NCAA tournament drives up perception, it makes sense that the playoffs would do something similar.
Evan
January 19, 2011
Two words: Austin Croshere
Kent
January 19, 2011
your system overrates rebounds dude
marparker
January 20, 2011
What if rebounding captures alot of other aspects of a players game that aren’t covered by current stats?
So maybe the system literally overrates rebounds but does not technically overrate rebounds.
Philip
January 24, 2011
Tom,
Perhaps part of it is that playoff teams want to keep their cores intact. In other words, does Joe Johnson get a max contract if the Hawks aren’t a playoff team? I’m skeptical. Then again, I’m baffled that he got a max contract at all, so I’m clearly missing something.
Building on marparker’s point,
Teams are more likely to score when they gain possession in a live-ball situation, whether it be a rebound or a turnover. I’ve heard two arguments for this.
The first is that it allows the offense to attack the defense when the defense isn’t yet set. A defensive rebound gives the offense a chance to fast break, whether it’s the rebounder using the possession himself (measured by box-score stats) or making outlet pass (unmeasured). An offensive rebound gives the chance to either score on a putback (measured), or kick out for an open shot while the defense has not yet reset (measured if it’s the first pass, unmeasured if there are subsequent passes).
The other is that the psychological benefits exist: doing something well, such as forcing a miss and acquiring a defensive rebound, cause players to play better in the immediate possession than when do something poorly, such as allow their opponent to score.
I find the first much more convincing, though both are conceivable, and neither are mutually exclusive.