Previous research has shown how more attractive people reap more rewards in a variety of settings. We show that attractiveness as measured by facial symmetry leads to greater rewards in professional sports. National Football League quarterbacks who are more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for player performance.

D J Berri

J Van Gilder

L O'Neill

R Simmons

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lancaster University Management School 
Working Paper  
2010/040 
 
 
 
 
 
What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? 
Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic 
Performance 
 
 
 
 
 
 
David Berri, Rob Simmons, Jennifer Van Gilder and Lisle 
O'Neill  
 
 
The Department of Economics                        
Lancaster University Management School 
Lancaster LA1 4YX 
UK 
 
 
© David Berri, Rob Simmons, Jennifer Van Gilder and Lisle O'Neill  
All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed 
two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission, 
provided that full acknowledgement is given. 
 
The LUMS Working Papers series can be accessed at http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/publications/ 
LUMS home page: http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/ 1 
 
What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? 
Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance 
 
David J. Berri 
Department of Economics and Finance 
Southern Utah University 
 
 
 
Rob Simmons* 
Department of Economics 
Lancaster University 
 
 
 
Jennifer Van Gilder 
Department of Economics 
Ursinus College 
 
 
Lisle O'Neill 
Department of Economics 
Ursinus College 
 
 
Abstract: Previous research has shown how more attractive people  reap more rewards in a 
variety of settings.  We show that attractiveness as measured by facial symmetry leads to 
greater rewards in professional sports.  National Football League quarterbacks who are 
more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for 
player performance. 
Key words: facial symmetry; salaries; NFL quarterbacks 
JEL codes: J3; J4 
Corresponding author: Department of Economics, Lancaster University LA1 4YX UK, +44 1524 
594234 (phone), +44 1524 594244 (fax), r.simmons@lancaster.ac.uk 
 
 2 
 
What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? 
Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance 
 
1.  Introduction 
In recent years researchers in the fields of economics, sociology, and anaplasty (application of 
reconstructive surgery) have used symmetry analysis as a method to make beauty an objective 
issue. People characterized by greater facial symmetry, as defined by exhibiting balanced lateral 
proportions, are considered to be more attractive and greater attractiveness is connected to 
observed outcomes. Adams and Lavoie (1974) and Clifford and Walster (1973) find that teachers 
give more favorable treatment to more attractive students.  At mock trials, prettier people are 
given lighter sentences (Buck and Tiene,1989). According to Mocan and Tekin (2010) ‘uglier’ 
people have greater propensity to commit crimes. In an influential study of beauty and salaries, 
Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) showed that, holding all covariates equal, better looking people 
earn greater salary than average looking people, creating a wage premium of 5% per person. 
Mobius and Rosenblatt (2006) presented experimental evidence to show that physically 
attractive people earn higher wages, primarily because of better communication skills.  
 A number of studies have shown that more attractive people are perceived to be more competent 
and more productive in the labor market. Among the factors cited in this literature are 
confidence, leadership skills and social skills, all of which may be enhanced by attractiveness. 
More attractive individuals may possess greater self-esteem and higher levels of motivation both 
at school, in human capital acquisition during formative years and later on in the labor market 
(Mocan and Tekin, 2010). A related strand of empirical literature suggests that height can have a 
positive impact on salaries and other labor market outcomes (Persico, Postlethwaite and 3 
 
Silverman, 2004, Case, Paxson and Islam, 2009). The latter report that the height premium is 
explained mostly by higher average educational achievement of taller people reinforced by 
sorting of tall people into occupations and industries that offer higher salaries. 
 
2.  Data and model 
Our analysis of the relationship between attractiveness and earnings focuses on the quarterback – 
or the “face of the franchise” – in the National Football League (NFL).  The NFL is a good 
vehicle for studying the effects of attractiveness on salary as pay levels for players are publicly 
available and a set of complete and accurate performance measures is also published. 
Confidence, leadership and height are all necessary ingredients for a successful quarterback in 
the NFL making it an interesting case to study.   
We constructed a sample of 138 NFL quarterbacks from 1995 to 2009.
 1  The Symmeter 
program
2 was then used to measure the facial symmetry of each player. The process began with 
the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the face.  Vertically, the area consisted of the chin to 
the hairline. Horizontally, the entire face was selected, excluding the subject’s ears. The program 
analyzed the symmetry of the player’s face in both bilateral and radial manner. The number of 
pixels correlating to the mirror image of the picture generated a symmetry proportion. The NFL 
                                                            
1 Headshot pictures of 138 National Football League quarterbacks from the years 1995-2009 constitute the sample 
for this study.  All photographs were retrieved from the NFL homepage and Yahoo! Sport, therefore ensuring 
comparable picture quality.  
2 In 2002, Dave Davis, with the assistance of Mike Jones, developed Symmeter; a symmetry measurement tool. See 
http://www.symmeter.com for more information on this computer package. 4 
 
quarterbacks in our sample had facial symmetry ranging from 90.36 to 99.77, where higher 
scores are more symmetrical. 
We next turn to a model designed to explain quarterback’s salaries in the NFL.  The specific 
salary model we employ – reported in equation (1) --follows Berri and Simmons (2009):   
lnSAL =   b0 + b1*PYARDS + b2*CPASSATT + b3*EXP + b4*EXPSQ + b5* DRAFT1 +     
  b 6*DRAFT2 + b7*VET + b8*NEWTM + b9*lnOFFSAL + b10*PB +  
  b 11*SYMMETRY + et                     (1) 
 
Total salary (lnSAL) -- including base salary and signing bonuses – serves as our dependent 
variable.
 3 In the NFL, unlike other professional sports, only the signing bonus is guaranteed.  
Players who do not perform well in the NFL will often see their salary reduced or see their 
position eliminated.  This feature of the labor market creates a strong link between current pay 
and recent performance.   
 
Our model includes a quarterback’s passing yards from the prior season (PYARDS), career pass 
attempts (CPASSATT), total years of experience in the league (EXP) as well as experience 
squared (EXPSQ), whether the quarterback was taken in the first or second round of the NFL 
draft (DRAFT1, DRAFT2), the fact that bargaining status changes after a player has completed 
three years in the NFL (VET), the impact of changing teams (NEWTM), the talent around the 
                                                            
3 Bonuses are given for signing, performance, and ‘other’ reasons.  For the purposes of salary cap computation, any 
signing bonuses are pro-rated over the life of the player’s contract, which will typically cover more than one season. 
The pro-rated salary measure is reported in USA Today and on Rodney Fort’s website, 
www.Rodneyfort.com/SportsBusiness and this will be used in our empirical analysis.  5 
 
player (lnOFFSAL)
4, and whether or not the player has ever appeared in the Pro Bowl (PB). To 
this list of variables we add our measure of SYMMETRY, which we described above.  It is this 
variable that is our focus of interest. Table 1 reports descriptive statistics for all our variables. 
 
We have data over player careers from 1995 to 2009 and we have 621 player-season 
observations over this period. This means that a given player may appear more than once in our 
sample. Given that our measure of attractiveness only appears once for each player, so we cannot 
use a fixed effects estimator, we deal with potential biases from the implicit weighting in pooled 
OLS estimation by collapsing our data set into career averages and re-estimating equation (1). 
This will serve as a robustness check on our results.  
 
3.  Results 
The focus in this current study is the impact of facial symmetry. We begin by regressing log 
salary on symmetry, without any controls. We do so because the literature on attractiveness and 
salary suggests that quarterback performance may be partly a function of quarterback 
attractiveness. Inclusion of performance controls could mean over-controlling for the effect of 
beauty on salaries. From this simple regression, in the pooled sample we obtain a coefficient on 
symmetry of 0.089 with a t statistic of 3.73. In the smaller sample of career averages we find a 
symmetry coefficient of 0.109 with a t-statistic of 3.10. Then, as we add quarterback 
performance and other covariates the coefficients and t-statistics on the symmetry variable each 
decline. All control variables, including the performance measures and player characteristics, 
                                                            
4 A quarterback’s performance is impacted by the performances of teammates. To capture this complementarity, the 
team salaries of the other skill players (i.e. running backs, tight ends and wide receivers) are added for each team-
season and log-transformed to give lnOFFSAL.  6 
 
have significant coefficients with signs in accord with Berri and Simmons (2009).  From both 
samples, the results reported in Table 2 show that symmetry has a positive and significant 
coefficient on salary at the 5% level. Facial attractiveness as captured by our symmetry data, 
adds to player salaries over and above performance, player characteristics and co-worker effects.  
 
We note that when we use our sample of career averages, where each quarterback only appears 
once, the coefficient of symmetry in the log salary model is actually greater than for pooled OLS 
(0.052 versus 0.038). The impact of symmetry on salary remains at 0.038 when we re-estimate 
by weighted OLS and by Huber robust regression to control for outliers in the data and also 
when nominal salary is replaced by CPI-adjusted real salary.   
 
On economic significance, the more conservative pooled OLS results reveal that a change in 
symmetry from one standard deviation below the mean to one standard deviation above (an 
increase of 3.16 points on symmetry score) would result in a salary increase of 11.8% ($378,000 
at mean salary). Hence, a better-looking quarterback generates a substantial salary premium over 
an equivalent worse-looking player, purely for his physical attractiveness and regardless of his 
observed performance and characteristics.  
 
4.  Conclusions 
Given the nature of quarterback performance in the NFL, perhaps we should not be surprised that 
beauty matters. One explanation of our results is that a general manager of a NFL team would 
benefit by hiring a more attractive quarterback, ceteris paribus.  This benefit could be seen if fans 
have preferences for better looking quarterbacks. More attractive quarterbacks may help generate 7 
 
greater luxury box revenues for their teams. Moreover, these revenues are not shared with 
competing teams.  
 
Successful NFL quarterbacks are required to deploy self-confidence, leadership skills and social 
skills. They must communicate complex play designs to team-mates who must in turn be able to 
trust quarterback decisions on the field of play. Previous literature suggests that these attributes 
are enhanced by beauty. Our study is therefore consistent with the conjecture that attractiveness 
enhances earnings through these intangible skills. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
Table One Descriptive Statistics 
 
Continuous variables  Mean Standard  deviation 
SALARY, $m  3.20  3.20 
PYARDS 1938  1427 
CPASSATT 1584  1677 
EXP 6.80  3.78 
OFFSAL, $m  15.70  6.00 
SYMMETRY 98.07  1.53 
Dummy variables  Percentages for value = 1   
DRAFT1 10.14   
DRAFT2 3.54   
VET 65.54   
NEWTM 37.04   
PB 22.06   
 
 
 
TableTwo 
The Estimation of Equation (1) 
Dependent Variable: Log of Salary 
Years: 1995 to 2009 
 
Pooled OLS, n = 621  Career Averages, n= 138 
Variable Coefficient  |t-stat|  Coefficient |t-stat| 
PYARDS 0.00027*** 10.79  0.00058***  10.70 
CPASSATT 0.00016***  4.62 
EXP 0.182***  4.22  0.170***  3.31 
EXPSQ -0.012***  5.12 -0.010***  3.60 
DRAFT1 0.852*** 9.09  0.888***  5.47 
DRAFT2  0.180     1.06  0.081  0.37 
VET 0.334***  3.09  0.162**  2.10 
NEWTM -0.430*** 6.12  -0.592***  3.77 
lnOFFSAL 0.421***  5.47  0.276*  1.83 
PB 0.264***  3.73  0.144  1.02 
SYMMETRY 0.038**  2.33  0.052***  2.61 
R-squared 0.62  0.80 
Notes:  Robust standard errors reported. Year dummies included.  
Qualifying condition is at least 1 play in previous season; rookies excluded. *, **, *** denote significance 
levels of 10, 5 and 1 per cent respectively.  
 
 
 9 
 
 
References  
Adams, G.,LaVoie, J. 1974. The effect of student's sex, conduct, and facial attractiveness on 
teacher expectancy, Education 95(1), 76-83. 
 
Buck, S., Tiene, D. 1989. The impact of physical attractiveness, gender, and teaching philosophy 
on teacher evaluations. Journal of Educational Research 82, 72-177.  
 
Berri, D. J.,Simmons, R. 2009. Race and the evaluation of signal callers in the 
National Football League. Journal of Sports Economics 10 (1), 23-43. 
 
Case, A., Paxson, C., Islam, M. 2009. Making sense of the labor market height premium: 
Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey. Economics Letters 102, 174-176.  
 
Clifford, M., Walster, E. 1973. The effect of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations. 
Sociology of Education 46, 248-258. 
 
Hamermesh, D.S., Biddle, J. 1994. Beauty and the labor market. American Economic Review 
84, 1174-1194.  
 
Honekopp, J., Rudolph, U., Beier, L., Liebert, A.Muller, C. 2006.  Physical attractiveness of face 
and body as indicators of physical fitness in men, Evolution and Human Behavior 28, 106-111.  
 
Mobius, M., Rosenblatt, T. 2006. Why beauty matters. American Economic Review 96 (1): 225-
235. 
 
Mocan, N., Tekin, E, 2010. Ugly criminals. Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (1), 15-30. 
 
Persico, N., Postlewaite, A., Silverman, D. 2004. The effect of adolescent experience on labor 
market outcomes: The case of height. Journal of Political Economy 112 (5), 1019-1053. 
 
 

Beauty and the labor market.

Making sense of the labor market height premium: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey.

Physical attractiveness of face and body as indicators of physical fitness in men,

Race and the evaluation of signal callers in the National Football League.

The effect of adolescent experience on labor market outcomes: The case of height.

The effect of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations.

The effect of student's sex, conduct, and facial attractiveness on teacher expectancy,

The impact of physical attractiveness, gender, and teaching philosophy on teacher evaluations.

Ugly criminals.

Why beauty matters.

What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance

http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/document/17477

What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics