Professional Athlete Signs Contract That Brings Him €45M-a-Year – But With Bizarre “Call of Duty” Clause

Football player Kyle Murray becomes one of the highest-paid NFL pros when he signs a $230.5 million contract extension with the Arizona Cardinals. One interesting clause obliges him to do “homework” and limits his video game time. Because Murray is considered a huge fan of the gaming series “Call of Duty” and streams himself on Twitch.

Who is Kyle Murray?

• Kyle Murray (24) is the quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals. He was the 2019 Offensive Rookie of the Year and made two Pro Bowls, so he’s a really good man.
• In addition to his sporting career, he streams on Twitch: preferably sports games like NFL Madden or NBA 2k. He only streams a few hours a year, but is a member of “FaZe Clan”, one of the largest gaming organizations in the world.
• Murray is known to be a huge fan of the Call of Duty series.

The release of a new Call of Duty is the highlight of every year for some gamers:

What is it with Call of Duty? There is a legendary story about Murray: He had an extremely exciting game against the Buffalo Bills in 2020 and his team was able to win at the last second. The team celebrated the win exuberantly.

Murray didn’t celebrate, but drove home and played Call of Duty in front of his Twitch viewers.

There are also statistics that want to prove that Murray played significantly worse in the years 2019 to 2021 after the respective Call of Duty was released (via twitter).

But that is viewed critically: because the last games of a season are often accompanied by other circumstances: games are no longer that important or a long season takes its toll.

No video games during homework time

What is that clause now? Murray has signed a new, huge contract extension. But there is one extremely strange clause in the contract:

That clause obliges Murray to do some sort of “homework” 4 hours a week, looking at footage provided by the team — so likely video footage of opposing defenses so he can respond as a quarterback (via twitter).

The clause specifically states that he is not allowed to play video games during “homework” time – neither is he allowed to watch television or surf the Internet.

Doesn’t count as “doing homework” unfortunately – Kyle Murray reads the defense in Madden:

“After 30 years in football I’ve never seen anything like it”

How is this discussed? Such a clause is absolutely unusual because professional athletes who earn so much money a year are expected to prepare optimally for a game.

That you have to tell a pro to deal with the game instead of playing Call of Duty is actually considered outrageous. Since the clause became public, there has been a discussion in the USA about how it can be that a top athlete has to be contractually required to do something like this – many experts are outraged that it is “only” about 4 hours a week.

An early manager of one team says (via twitter):

In 30 years of looking at NFL contracts, I’ve never seen anything like it. Weird that they pay him $46 million a year and make sure he does his homework 4 hours a week.

But apparently it was important to the team to write that explicitly in the contract. They will probably know their player best.

Many professional athletes are into video games, often shooters:

Jup, Griezmann just got the Fortnite cheers out of the World Cup final