Brady Quinn, getting paid

A couple of months ago Play, the excellent New York Times‘ sports magazine, ran a Dave Berri article suggesting that attractive quarterbacks are paid better than their statistically-equal but total-uggo counterparts. It’s awesome.

Money quote:

economists Rob Simmons, Jennifer VanGilder and I collected data on 121 N.F.L. quarterbacks who played from 1995 to 2006. We looked at the factors that determine player pay – career statistics, experience, Pro Bowl appearances and draft position – as well as the symmetry of each quarterback’s face. Sure enough, symmetry had a positive impact on a quarterback’s salary. Specifically, an increase of one standard deviation in facial symmetry led to a nearly 8 percent increase in pay.

I’ll ignore the really shocking news here – the fact that symmetry is the only
determining factor of attractiveness, a dumbing down of pretty that ignores so
many of my wonderful qualities – and instead try to focus on why the PBB could be.

Berri notes that those most affected by the PBB are the lowest paid
quarterbacks.  On one hand this makes intuitive sense – in the end, no one is signing anyone to be the QB just
because they’re attractive; if you’re awesome it is going to become clear
regardless, and if you’re terrible, being pretty isn’t going to get you signed.
But since the bulk of players fall between these two extremes, players that don’t stand out are more likely to be judged by
different criteria, even if unintentionally.

I would guess that one reason that attractiveness
comes into play is that many of the same qualities that go into making
you attractive also play into how you’re scouted.

Plenty more, ATJ

I’m not making the argument that attractiveness is akin to talented (though
I would guess that, for many of the same reasons I’m about to get into, they are
correlated) but rather that scouts look for more than numbers. They look at demeanor;
they look at how a player responds to big hits, and how their teammates rally
around them. Probably, growing up, many of the kids who were attractive
also were confident – they probably got girls, their teammates probably liked them, etc. I’m not breaking news when I
suggest the kids who other kids want to be like tend to be on the attractive
side. Because of all of that their teammates throughout
the years may have reacted better to them
and they had a level of confidence that less attractive kids didn’t. 

Now I’m not sure that translates at the pro level: I don’t think some left
tackle is going to try harder for one guy than another – his motivation is a
paycheck, not earning the respect of his teammates – but I think that its at least plausible that scouts shorthand associate
attractiveness with competence. In junior high or high school, where a kid may have received an actual boost from their confidence, they were better. Not they just look it. Still, scouts will pay these pretty boys slightly
more because they have “that something” that used to mean something. I guess what I’m getting at is that my theory is this: at a
lower level, being attractive is an asset, so a higher level (when it no longer
is) personnel guys still subliminally think it’s one.

It’s like this: If two students both write B+ papers but one shows up five
minutes early, always has sharpened pencils, and has his book open at the start
of class while the second shows up as the bell rings without the assigned
reading or his left shoe the “good” student may well recieve an A-
while the “bad” student gets knocked down to a B. They could switched papers and not results.

It’s that or the fact that NFL GMs, as a rule, love dudes. Either one really.

Still, it confuses that it is the backups who are rewarded the most.  Common sense would tell me it’d be the opposites. To a GM, paying an attractive quarterback a couple hundred thousand more than an equally talented but less attractive player might end up being a smart bottom line decision. You see, if a GM managed to put together an impossibly talented roster and no one came out to watch it they’d be out of a job pretty quickly.  Running a football team is about two things – first winning, but second making money.

If a Pretty Boy QB is able to secure an endorsements and/or sell merchandise he turns himself into an asset off the field as well.  Take last season’s jersey sales, for example: the fella at the top of the page sold the 17th most jerseys last season despite the fact that he threw a total of 8 passes, none of which went for touchdowns.  JaMarcus Russell, a more highly touted (he went 1st overall in the draft, Quinn went 22nd) but probably less attractive (you know what I mean) prospect did not make the list.

Look, if you can’t play all the pretty in the world ain’t getting you to the show (sigh), but maybe sometimes it makes some sense to cough over a couple more dollars just to ink the Pretty Boy.

FWIW, my fantasy football team – The (waitforit …) Pretty Boys – took home
the chip in my money league.

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