What would the NFL look like if it ran on a teacher-tenure system?
鈥淭he on-field product would steadily decline,鈥� former NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton wrote in published earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal.
Tarkenton led his op-ed with this scenario:
Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player鈥檚 salary is based on how long he鈥檚 been in the league. It鈥檚 about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he鈥檚 an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player鈥檚 been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.
Tarkenton uses this example to slam the concept of teacher tenure in his editorial, saying that tenured employees have no incentive to perform better.
鈥淚f anything,鈥� Tarkenton says, teacher tenure 鈥減enalizes those who work hard because they spend time, energy, and their own money to help students, only to get the same check each month as the worst teacher in the district (or an even smaller one, if that teacher has been there longer.鈥�)
Our friends on the Teaching Now blog about Tarkenton鈥檚 op-ed yesterday, and pointed out that 鈥淣FL players do tend to have multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts, which give them a level of financial security known to very few working Americans.鈥�
In fact, in the new 10-year NFL , players for the first time in league history have injury guarantees written into their contracts. If a player suffers a career-ending injury, that player will receive up to $1 million for the contract year after their injury, and up to $500,000 the year after that.
Reader Gene AR鈥檚 comment on the Teaching Now post likely sums up teachers鈥� thoughts about Tarkenton鈥檚 anti-tenure argument: 鈥淲hen are we going to get those multi-million dollar contracts?鈥�