The Impact of Positional Salary Allocation and Performance on Winning Percentage in the NFL

Hammond, Maxwell

The Impact of Positional Salary Allocation and Performance on Winning Percentage in the NFL

Persistent URL

https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/56702

Author(s)

Hammond, Maxwell

Date Issued

April 10, 2023

Abstract

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest American football league in the world and consists of thirty-two teams. In the NFL, the way teams are perceived as successful is by beating their opponents and winning games, whoever has the most points at the end of the game is deemed the winner. Following the induction of the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 1994, the structure of NFL team salary caps has been a question of interest for many fans and NFL executives. With the surface goal of NFL team-decision makers being to win games and ultimately win the Super Bowl, this paper will be examining the impact of salary allocation on an NFL teams’ win percentage. The analysis will be conducted by regressing positional performance metrics and positional salary allocation against a given team’s win percentage during that season, in order to determine whether there is any significant relationship between the statistics and win percentage. My research will be looking at the 2016-2021 seasons and aiming to draw some meaningful conclusions about which position’s performance and salary dispersion impacts the win percentage in recent seasons. The contemporary factor of these seasons will shed a better light on the current state of the NFL and which positions contribute the most to the team. My research will be conducted by utilizing three different models including different regression methods that I will explain in more detail later on in the paper.

Major

Economics

Honors

Business and Economics, 2023

First Reader(s)

Bianco, Timothy P.