Open Rants by OliverMulcahy

This is a daunting title for a football topic. After all, an article about America's most popular sport shouldn't read like an academic paper. However, for those who play in the NFL, it is far more serious than entertainment. Week in and week out, we watch as 1472 men on fields across the country sacrifice their bodies for their teams. Injuries occur every week. The NFL takes injury timeouts and profits off advertising as players lay on the turf, with their futures, both in football and in life, in jeopardy. The sport is, indubitably, high risk and high stakes.

Usually, the high risk of a job entails a higher financial reward. Not in the NFL. There is no better example of this than the running back position. Every hit is a car crash, sprinting full speed into a wall of 240-300lb athletes with the singular focus of contact. A running back can face 20 of these car crashes every game, for 16 weeks a year. Even when they aren't touching the ball, they are bowling pins for a blitzing linebacker to obliterate in their pursuit of the quarterback. It's no wonder that to see a running back older than 30 is a rarity, and older than 35 a miracle. 

With players left facing long term pain, from a myriad of injuries and quite possibly, and tragically, CTE, it would only be just to be paid handsomely for this sacrifice. Much like how a heart surgeon gets paid handsomely for adept skill in highly stressful and risky situations, running backs, to the outside observer, deserve the money. Unfortunately though, unlike the surgeons, there is a surfeit of running backs. 71 have been drafted in the past 3 years. And that's notwithstanding all the undrafted running backs like Phillip Lindsay, who would at least double that total. 

 Anyone who has a basic understanding of economics understands scarcity and its relationship with value. The greater there is in supply, the cheaper the price. And this is where the dilemma of the running back position lies. For a position with such a physical toll, where athletes playing for a handful of years leave lifelong damage on their body, running backs barely even receive the slither of the play. 

This isn't a problem for us fans. When Le'Veon Bell sat out last year, we burnt our jerseys and bought new ones with "30" splattered in gold across the back, for the new hero, James Conner. After an electric rookie season, Todd Gurley was a star playmaker. 4 years later, his future is in question, with the new rookie Darrell Henderson waiting in the wings; on the other side of the country, Saquon Barkley is the new star playmaker, for now. Fans enjoy good football and move on to the next star to make highlights on Sports Centre or Instagram.

This is what the NFL wants. New and exciting players keep fans interested and revenue is generated. Meanwhile, owners and GMs will exploit 22-year-old athletes on relatively cheap contracts to succeed and profit. 

Unless you are a ruthlessly emotionless profiteer, or an accountant, you will see that there is a problem here. But how can it be fixed? The first method is being trialled at the moment- holding out. Bell held out for a whole season and managed to get his cash at the team he wanted. Now Zeke Elliot and Melvin Gordon are fighting for their next contracts, hoping to change the future for their position. However, these stars will, at best, just create a race to the top. At worst, Tony Pollard or Justin Jackson will be this year's James Conner. Either way, the average Joes, the vast majority of the running back position, won't see a change in their incomes. 

With the CBA coming up for re-negotiation, it is worth wondering whether the NFLPA will push for a raise in minimum contracts for players, raising player incomes. However, with the NFL opening with a left-field 18 game season concept, it appears that player posterity is only in the thoughts of one side of the negotiation.

So what else can be done? The only definitive answer is to address the original problem. Scarcity. If you are in high school and curious about the running back position, don't play it. Protect yourself. And if you protect yourself from the damage, you'll make that running back market a little more scarce. Until kids understand that the danger and lack of reward that is prevalent to playing running back, this problem will not go away naturally.