Green Bay Packer, Detroit Lion, or US President?

Today’s post comes from National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications staff writer Rob Crotty.

These days, the average NFL player receives about $1.2 million a year, not a bad paycheck for throwing around the old pigskin. After all, that’s three times what the President makes (though he does get free limo rides), and plenty more than your average blogger does (sigh).

But in 1935, playing football wasn’t the glitzy well-funded enterprise it is today. That’s the year the Green Bay Packers went looking for a center, and found future President Gerald Ford. They offered President Ford $110 bucks a game.  Over the course of a season—14 games—that means Ford would’ve squirreled away $1,540, about $24,000 bucks in 2011 dollars, if he had accepted the draft deal.

Ford declined this offer, and another offer from the Detroit Lions to play professional football, and instead made his way over into Yale to study law, then to the Navy to serve his country, then to the House of Representatives, and finally to the White House where, thankfully, the salary was a bit better.

You can learn more at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library’s Facebook page.