07-08-2024, 11:49 AM
(07-05-2024, 04:21 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Just throwing this out there when you say $705k....
Until the player make the final cuts and finishes Week 1 to get their first ~$39,000 paycheck (of which they see significantly less after taxes as a larger earner), they're still poor unless they got a significant signing bonus, and even then they're in constant threat of never making any more money from the NFL again.
A quick google says an average nutritionist in Ohio makes $57,500 per year. If you are a top tier professional athlete, you really don't want an "average" person.
Unless you're a very high draft pick, you really don't have the job security and funds saved up to hire someone that's going to cost you well over $60k/yr (possibly much much more as I am not sure if you'd have to pay towards healthcare and the like depending on the state, as they would be your employee) until your second contract. Hiring people is expensive.
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After all the taxes, the players take home a whole lot less. In Cincinnati, if you make $705k, you're taking home $424k after Federal, FICA, State, and Local taxes. Of course you actually end up having to file taxes for every state you play in. So while you'd have a marginal 3.75% State taxes in Ohio for the 8 games you played there, if you play @Chargers and @Rams that year, that's 2 games with California's 13.3% cutting into those week's paychecks.
So you can see how a guy who has no year-to-year employment guarantee, or even week-to-week employment guarantee, can't afford to be putting 14-23.5% of their entire year's take-home salary on hiring someone.
Couple of things here. As you said, an average nutritionist makes ballpark 58K (I'll take your word for it, I did not look it up) They are not making this from one person though, so the 14-23% of salary number is way off. Joe Burrow's chef may very well work only for him, but most nutritionists, even the best, have multiple clients who pay them pennies comparably. The cost of a nutritionist visit in Ohio is top-end 112 dollars per visit. So, to have a nutritionist you see once a week for a year is a little over $5800.00. Again, if you're making 750K, cry me a river.
And, while the players are paying taxes in other localities for away games, they are not paying Cincinnati or Ohio taxes on that money, so while it's more, it's not drastically more.
This is not to say I'm against the Bengals hiring full-time nutritionists, I see no reason why they shouldn't. But for players to come out and act like they cannot afford it is ludicrous and shows how tone deaf they are.
