About 1,000,000 high school players {1}
About 250 new NFL players each draft class. {2}
Median lifetime earnings for NFL is about $3,000,000. {3}


Making a HS players chance of going pro about 0.025% (1,000,000 / 250 = 0.00025).

Your expected earnings, as a player good enough to play in high school, are therefore $3,000,000 * 0.00025 or $750 LIFETIME.

Again, compare with almost any other career choice. Learn to code and expect to earn something like $2-3 million lifetime, conservatively. (30 years x $85000 {4})

This makes e.g. computer science a roughly 3000x better career choice than pro football, for a high-school aged person. Making the NFL is great; so is winning the lotto. Probably you will see similar demographics comparing lotto players and active NFL players. It's a tax on a perceived lack of solid, predictable opportunity.


{1}: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267955/participation-in-us-high-school-football/
{2}: https://www.quora.com/How-many-players-make-it-in-the-NFL-after-they-get-drafted/answer/Michael-Keller-43?ch=10&oid=188757785&share=5adc9568&srid=2y1&target_type=answer
{3}: https://www.businessinsider.com/nfl-players-having-trouble-making-salaries-last-into-retirement-2017-9#:~:text=But%20in%20reality%2C%20the%20average,players%20are%20about%20%243%20million.
{4}: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary