Long snapping is the lowest paid position in professional sports. Most long snappers earn the league minimum, currently 660 thousand dollars a year for a rooky. Reed ferguson, who just completed his fifth full time season, is now earning over one million dollars a year. It's really just, you know, rising tide lifts all boats.
Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is proof of that argument. Just in time for the Super Bowl, here’s everything there is to know about a job that didn’t used to exist.