Despite a global pandemic that nearly derailed the NFL season, kept stadiums largely empty and had lasting ramifications on this year's league-wide salary cap, NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith realized a nearly 40-percent pay-increase, according to Sports Business Journal.
The SBJ on Wednesday reported that Smith's earnings rose to $4.462 million through Feb. 28, 2021, when the fiscal year ended and for which the union filed its financial report.
There is a bit of a caveat. Smith's largest source of that prodigious jump in earnings camp from what SBJ reported was a $1.752 million lump-sum payout from a “deferred guarantor trust,” the publication noted.
Without the nearly $2 million deferred sum payment, Smith would have made less this year than in the union's last financial filing, the SBJ noted. Smith's previous salary was approximately $3.2 million.
Elsewhere within the NFLPA, managing director Ira Fishman earned $955,000 – a $44,000 increase from the previous year among the union's hierarchy.