XFL draft selection spurns fledgling league
WASHINGTON Corey Vereen’s NFL aspirations never got off the ground. Signed as a free agent by the New England Patriots after going undrafted out of Tennessee in 2017, the defensive end tore his ACL during a minicamp practice and never even participated in training camp, getting cut by the team with an injury settlement just before the 2017 season began.
Vereen would have made around US$1,110 per week as a first-year player during training camp, per the league’s collective bargaining agreement (NFL players do not receive their base salaries during training camp, instead getting what the league describes as a “per diem”). That training camp pay obviously pales in comparison to what players receive if they make an NFL roster.
It’s also more than the XFL is planning on paying most of its players for its inaugural season.
On Wednesday, Vereen’s agent announced he had decided not to play in the XFL in 2020 because the league’s salaries for non-quarterbacks “did not come close to matching” the pay that had been discussed previously. In the statement, Logan Brown Sports said the XFL planned on paying its non-quarterbacks $27,040 in max base salary, with per-game active bonuses of $1,685 and weekly bonuses of $2,222 for players on winning teams.
As tabulated by ESPN’S Kevin Seifert, that means a player who is active for all 10 games and is on a team that goes 5-5 would earn $55,000 for the season, the equivalent of $1,058 per week over 52 weeks, less than the NFL’S rookie training camp per diem.
Vereen played in the doomed Alliance of American Football earlier this year, leading the Memphis Express with four sacks before the league imploded. Had the season played out in full, Vereen’s salary would have reached $70,000. Since then, Vereen has been working in computer science, his major at Tennessee.
“How are you going to sit here and get all these people together and try to get the best talent for your league and pay them $27,000?” Vereen told Seifert. “I love the game. But I’m not going to be taken advantage of at the end of the day. I have an engineering degree. I’m a software developer. My current job makes more than that. I’m not doing that, unfortunately. It looked like a great opportunity.”
The Los Angeles Wildcats selected Vereen in the XFL’S inaugural draft earlier this month. Vereen told Seifert that he passed up a chance to play in the Canadian Football League — where the minimum salary is just more than $41,000 in U.S. currency — because the XFL had extended him a commissioner’s invitation to its draft, which he took assuming a higher salary.
Vereen added that other XFL draft picks “most definitely” are mulling a similar decision.
The Washington Post