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A new professional football league is presenting itself as an alternative to college-age players who want to be treated like employees rather than students, The Washington Post reported. The founders of Pacific Pro Football, which will start in 2018 with four teams in Southern California, plan to require players to be no more than four years out of high school, taking aim directly at college-age players, and will pay them an average of $50,000 a year.
The league is emerging at a time of significant tumult surrounding the amateur status of big-time college football and basketball players.
"As I’ve thought about this and studied it for years, I felt that it would be terrific if these emerging football players had a choice in determining how they wanted to get better at their craft,” said Ed Yee, one of the league's founders and the agent of the star pro quarterback Tom Brady.
