Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore? (Update)

Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. In a matchup that absolutely no one would have predicted, the Seattle Seahawks will play the New England Patriots in this year's Super Bowl. The most prominent players on those teams are New England quarterback Drake May and Seattle wide receiver Jackson Smith Njigba. You'll notice I did not name a running back. Why not? That's what this episode is about. We first ran it last season, and now we've updated facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening. The National Football League, a phenomenally successful piece of the sports and entertainment industry, is largely built around the forward pass. That's when the quarterback, the star of the show, throws a ball downfield to one of his sprinting receivers who tries to catch the ball and sprint even further down the field. This can be a very exciting thing to watch. In recent years, the passing game has gotten even more exciting and more sophisticated, and it has helped drive the league's massive growth. But if you ask football fans of a certain age who they idolized when they were kids, it probably wasn't a wide receiver or even a quarterback. It was probably a running back. Big opening for Tony Dorsett. Look out. He's got great speed. 99 yards. Tony Dorsett was my favorite player. I had the uniform, the helmet. The running backs were bigger stars during my childhood than the quarterbacks. Sanders. Oh, my god. That's so beautiful. My favorite player of all time was Barry Sanders. The day that he retired, I remember crying. Waters, one man to beat. I had a Ricky Waters jersey when he was with the Eagles, actually. I wore it on the first day of school, I think, of first or second grade. The three men we just heard from, we will meet them later. Two of them are former NFL running backs themselves, and the other has represented many running backs as an agent. The running back I loved as a kid was Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers. To be honest, I was a little obsessed with Franco. We don't need to get into the details here, but I did once write a book about him called Confessions of a Hero Worshipper. Like I said, a little bit obsessed. I liked everything about Franco, the way he carried himself off the field, but especially how he ran. Some running backs, like Jim Brown, were known for their power, for running people over. Others, like Gale Sayers, were so fast and graceful that it was hard to get a hand on them. Franco was somewhere in the middle, strong but elusive, a darter and a dodger. In football, every play is a miniature drama packed into just a few seconds. 22 athletes moving at once as complicated as a blueprint, as brutal as war, as delicate as ballet. A passing play is a bit of a magic trick. The quarterback and receiver try …