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

Hey there, it's Steven 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 and Jigba. 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 have 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.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (58 minutes, 9,769 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.