Gridiron Greats

Times are really tough. You're making $15,000,000 a year in average annual salary and another measly $20,000,000 a year in other odd jobs. You've got a playmate girlfriend, houses in Malibu and Aspen, a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, 10 cars you purchased for over $100,000 each, $2,000,000 in bling. Now, how can you be expected to contribute $15,000 (.1% of the annual salary for those scoring at home) to help some deadbeats.

Some of your co-workers have the nerve to ask you for money to support these deadbeats. I mean, really, what did they do to deserve your charity? Who cares if they paved the way for you to make your cagillions bazillion dollars? Why does it matter to you if retired workers from certain departments have an average life expectancy of 50 years? Why is it your problem if many of them are struggling to stay off the streets, or stay out of rehab, or jail, or walk? Who cares that you'd probably be bagging groceries, or dealing drugs, or killed in a driveby shooting if it wasn't for these deadbeats? Why is that your problem, right?

The Gridiron Greats fund was founded in 2007 by former Green Bay Packer great Jerry Kramer to help former players with financial assistance and social services. Kramer auctioned off his replica ring from Super Bowl I and raised $22,000 to raise money to start the fund. The Board of Directors includes former NFL great Mike Ditka, Gale Sayers, and Harry Carson.


In early December, Matt Tirk, a center on the Minnesota Vikings, sent out a letter to all of the current players in the NFL asking them for some support to help the Gridiron Greats fund. The letter asked players to donate a portion of their December 21st game check to help the fund. Tirk himself pledged $50,000 for the cause.

Of the nearly 1,700 players in the NFL, 20 responded. No, that's not a typo. Two-zero. I can't seem to find the actual dollar figure that the 20 players came up with, but it is less than last year when the figure was around $300,000. Last year's salary cap was $116.7 million per team. I'm not going to run around the web for hours finding how much each team spent under the cap, so for argument's sake, lets say that about 85% percent of that money is actually spent. Most teams spend a majority of the cap money and unlike baseball there isn't a huge disparity between the highest and lowest. There are 32 teams in the NFL, so after failing to calculate this with my calculator without getting that annoying "E" on my calculator, and finding that even a piece of legal paper wasn't big enough to calculate it manually, and finally plugging the numbers into a spreadsheet, that comes to $3,174,240,000.

For arguments sake, let's say each player donates a tenth of one percent of their salary, that would provide a rather large donation of $3.17 million dollars. To put that in the context for the 2 or 3 people that might actually read this (one of which is my wife), if you were making $50,000 a year, one tenth of one percent would equate to a donation of $50. And of course none of this factors in the other money brought in by star players in their huge endorsement deals.

Every week we have to listen to the next scandal involving an NFL player. Whether it's Michael Vick getting his rocks off by killing dogs, or "How to shoot your NFL career in the foot, literally" by Plaxico Burress. Maybe this the perfect opportunity to boost the NFL's image a bit by donating a very modest amount to a worthy cause.