How big a bonus for players is the big game? Well, it depends. For rookies, it’s a nice windfall. But for the stars, on Sunday they’ll be playing for the glory, not for the paycheck. Because, for them, Sunday night in Houston represents a substantial pay cut.

Exactly how deep that cut is depends on who wins and who loses, and how much the star players typically made per game during the season.

The final-game pay structure is simple: Each member of the winning team gets a cool $97,000, just for suiting up for the big game. The losers? $49,000.

Nice work if you can get it, to be sure. But remember we’re talking about some of the most successful and highly-valued — and highly-paid — professional athletes in the country here.

Let’s look at the QBs, for example. Tom Brady? On average, with his salary and bonus, he took home $860,000 a game this past season. And Matt Ryan? A cool $1,484,375 for each of the 16 regular season games.

For the big game, they’re looking at $97,000, tops.

Meaning, combined, win or lose, the two best quarterbacks in the land will be $2,198,669 in the salary hole at the end of the big game.

On the bright side, though, for those rookies we mentioned, the 15 members of the Atlanta and New England rosters who made the league-minimum $450,000/year, netting out to $26,250 a game, their per-game pay will either almost double or almost quadruple on Sunday night. Now that’s something worth playing for!

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Psssst! Did you hear? According to one poll, most Americans want Atlanta to win the big game.

You might ask: Why so many football posts? In January 2017, we launched BigGameLending.com in honor of our hometown Atlanta team making it to the big game, and our sponsorship of big game talk and coverage on 92.9 The Game here in Atlanta.