It may come as a surprise to some that based on recent research, NFL players are actually arrested less often than men in their 20s and 30s as a whole.
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According to Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas, over "a 14-year period, for most types of crime, the general population has a greater rate of arrests than players in the NFL" and "the data show that the perception that NFL players are overly criminal compared to the U.S. population is false."
Piquero's study compared arrests of NFL players to arrests among all American men between the ages of 20 and 39 from 2000 to 2013. The results show that in each of those years, the crime rate was higher for men in the U.S in that age group than for NFL players.
However, let's not forget that NFL players are much wealthier than average men their age, which means they have more resources at their disposal to help them stay out of trouble. Therefore, it might be a matter of players having ways to get rid of their off-field issues before an arrest makes the headlines.
