This is a quick followup to “On professional sports: what many fans forget, ignore, or don’t know” posted earlier this month.
I had asserted that the median NFL player salary would be a more useful metric than the average (arithmetic mean) provided by the NFLPA, and that the former would be lower than the latter. It appears I was correct; a little research turned up this WikiAnswers question with the answer, in part:
The median salary in the NFL in 2009 is roughly $770,000. In 2008 it was about $720,000.
From this, my relatively educated guess puts the $1 million mark at the 65th to 70th percentile (meaning that 65% to 70% of NFL players make less than $1 million per year).