THE RUNNING BACK BY COMMITTEE APPROACH AND ITS EFFECT ON THE RUNNING BACK LABOR MARKET IN THE NFL

Abstract

Running back salaries in the National Football League have been a major point of discussion for the last two offseason cycles. The league has seen some of the highest performing players struggle to receive satisfactory contracts regarding length and/or value. There is a significant amount of research supporting the idea that running backs should be paid less which supports the trends in the league, but up to this point, there has not been any publicly available research examining the mechanisms behind the decrease in compensation these players face. In this study, we examined if the leaguewide trend of shifting towards adopting running back by committee approaches influenced running back salaries. Ultimately, we did not have significant results leading to us concluding that we must accept our null hypothesis that running back by committee does not have a significant effect on salaries.