Let’s face it, the National Football League (NFL) is the most popular major sports league in North America, and is widely known throughout the United States. In contrast, the National Hockey League (NHL) is definitely in the top four major sports leagues in America, but gets no where near the amount of publicity the NFL gets.
Football is an extremely tough sport that requires power from every single player on the field, but the NFL pays its players millions of dollars per season. The highest salary in the NFL is $24,000,000 per season, paid to Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. That is $1,500,000 per game as there are 16 games in one NFL season. If the NFL held as many games as an NHL season (82 games) then that would turn into $292,682 per game.
In the NHL, the players also get paid millions for playing hockey, which in my opinion requires a much greater set of skills to play since skating is the most important aspect of the game. Everyone can find a way to get from one end of a field to the other, but ice is a lot more difficult to maintain control on and is almost impossible to maneuver on without a set of blades. The highest salary in the NHL right now is $10,500,000 for an 82 game season, paid to Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins. That comes down to $128,048 per game, which is less than half per game than the highest NFL salary (if an NFL season consisted of 82 games). Though Tom Brady’s salary is much higher than Sidney Crosby’s, the average NFL salary per player per season is $2.11 million, while the NHL’s is $2.6 million. Since the average salaries of each league are comparable numbers, shouldn’t the highest salaries also be similar? Popular NFL players also have the chance to add onto their large salaries by endorsements from companies that want publicity through America’s new favorite game. Even if popular NHL and NFL players made the same per season, the NFL player would potentially make more through endorsements.
In the NHL, the players are all encouraged to show support to fans in any way possible. In early October of 2015, Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals was asked on a date by 10 year old with down syndrome named Ann Schaab, and he gladly accepted her request. Ovechkin gave her and her family glass level tickets to the Capitals next game, and after the game he invited Ann into the locker room to meet the players. From there they went to dinner. Ann and Ovechkin have afterwards stated that the “date” meant a lot to the both of them.
Based on a recent major event, the NFL is fining players for supporting cancer awareness as we saw last month, when the NFL fined Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward for wearing his father’s nickname “Ironhead” on his eye black in late October of 2015, who had died of cancer in 2006.
Despite the major differences in the two leagues, they both get the publicity that the fans of both the NHL and NFL ask for. Both offer entertainment and memories to the fans in every single game played and have their own perks. Everyone has a different taste in sports. Some do not find sports interesting or entertaining, and some hate one sport but love the other, thus the reason there are fans for both the NFL and NHL and not just one or the other.
