NFL, AP won't divulge what league pays for the official regular-season awards

In 2012, when the NFL packaged the presentation of it regular-season awards into a prime-time show, the league has made the annual Associated Press awards the official NFL awards.

The scrutiny of the process, sparked in part by the AP's decision (without telling the 50 voters in advance) to disclose the full voting on the eight awards on the night of the ceremony, raised a question: How much does the NFL pay the AP for the outsourcing of the awards process?

We posed that question to both the league and the AP. The NFL declined comment. The AP said this: "[W]e refrain from discussing the details of our business arrangements."

This year, the AP supplemented those business interests with a series of articles disclosing the various votes.

Maybe the AP does it for free. Maybe the league said to the AP, "Let us use your awards, or we'll do our own and yours will become irrelevant." Or maybe the NFL pays for the project. Even with a small army of in-house reporters employed by NFL Media, the league would have to allocate resources for the coordination, collection, casting, and tabulation of votes, if the league were to come up with the awards on its own.

Whatever the league does, or doesn't, pay the AP, the AP pays nothing to the 50 voters. Given that the ballots for the full All-Pro team (two spots deep for offense, defense, and special teams) and the eight awards are due in the hectic days after the regular-season ends — and given that (to do it right) the voting requires more than a few hours of work — some voters might broaden the lens and ask themselves the question of whether it's worth it.

No one is getting a job by having a vote. No one is keeping a job by having a vote. No one is losing a job by not having one.

So what's it in for the voters? Beyond being able to say "I have a vote" (if anyone really cares), what is there?

The voters are working for free. The AP is parlaying that free work into something sufficiently significant to not disclose publicly. It'll be interesting to see whether any voters, based on those basic facts, will tap out for 2025.

Especially those who aren't accustomed to being dragged or cooked or whatever on a certain social-media cesspool, once their votes are made public by the AP.