From the Olympics and March Madness to the big four North American sports, not a single major athletic league or tournament avoided disruption during the pandemic — and the return to sports has been a mixed bag.
The NBA and NHL put on a clinic, canceling their seasons early, engaging their players and union representatives in frequent negotiations, pioneering the quarantine “bubble” concept, successfully crafting new ranking structures based on shortened seasons, returning to play with exciting and fair formats and, most importantly, avoiding even a single positive case of COVID-19 among any of their combined athletes.
In baseball, the MLB stumbled through it with much greater difficulty. Positive cases were common, and each one triggered a clumsy string of postponements, restarts and shuffling of schedules.
The NFL’s season hasn’t stalled or showed any signs of slowing down as teams compete for a spot in the playoffs…but that’s not to say it hasn’t had its problems. There’s no cohesive league-wide policy on fans attending games — that’s up to the individual teams — and dozens of players have tested positive for COVID-19. However, if enough players on a given team test positive, the league has responded by moving games, resulting in some Tuesday and Wednesday broadcasts; and they’ve cracked down hard (in the form of fines) on coaches and players who skirt the mask rule.
One thing, however, has not changed — the league’s highest-paid players are still taking home giant paychecks.
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Methodology: For this piece, GOBankingRates used Spotrac data to find the highest-paid NFL player in every position. Using Spotrac’s positional data, GOBankingRates found the highest-paid player for all 20 positions in terms of (1) overall 2020 cap hit. GOBankingRates also found: (2) base salary for 2020; (3) signing bonus for 2020; (4) roster bonuses for 2020; and (5) workout/miscellaneous bonuses for 2020 (which included any restructuring). GOBankingRates also noted the current age and team for each of the highest-paid players. All data was collected and is up to date as of Sept. 10, 2020.
