NFL Player Career Earnings and Off-Field Behavior

Abstract

The present study seeks to add to the growing literature related to off-field actions impacting labor economic issues. It examines how off-field incidents with law enforcement and violations of league policies governing performance enhancing drugs impact career earnings for players. Furthermore, we seek to understand how career earnings are impacted for visible minorities. Ordinary least squares and quantile regression estimations of career earnings for over 3,500 National Football League players show generally these actions do not impact career earnings. If there are significant impacts, then the impacts generally tend to be positive, but not for racial minority players.