Boomer Esiason Suggests Barring California from Hosting Super Bowl

If former NFL great and current WFAN host Boomer Esiason has his way, the state of California will have hosted its last Super Bowl.

On Monday, the former Jet laid out the case that California’s punitive “jock tax,” which hit Super Bowl-winning quarterback Sam Darnold so hard that he actually lost money after playing in the big game, should prompt the league’s union to prevent the state from hosting any more Super Bowls.

The reasoning goes like this: The “jock tax” affects non-resident athletes and entertainers based on the number of “duty days” spent working in the state. Typically, this doesn’t hit NFL players traveling to California for a game. But since the buildup to the Super Bowl is longer than that for a regular-season game, it does affect visiting athletes.

To make matters worse, the tax rate is based on a player’s salary, not the check amount they receive from playing in the Super Bowl.

So, in the case of Darnold, he made $178,000 from winning the Super Bowl. However, because he spent the week in California and the state factored the tax based on his salary, not on what he made from the Super Bowl, he had to pay a whopping $249,000 in taxes.

So, Darnold won a ring but lost $71,000.

“Now, if I’m the NFLPA, now you’ve got to remember, it’s probably even more than that, because since he’s in Seattle, he’s playing against the San Francisco 49ers, so that’s another day he’s there. And he’s playing against the LA Rams, that’s another day he’s there,” Esiason explained.

“So, he’s probably had like nine or 10 duty days or maybe even more than that in the state of California. So, if I’m the NFLPA, I’m like, ‘Hey, we’re not playing any more Super Bowls in California,’ we’re just not doing it…If I’m the NFL Players Association, I’m saying, ‘we’re never going back to California.’ This is ridiculous.”

Unfortunately, for the wallets of whichever teams are scheduled to play there, California will once again host the Super Bowl next year when Los Angeles becomes the site of Super Bowl LXI.