Ask Sam Farmer: Who makes more money, NFL broadcasters or analysts?

Have a question about the NFL? Ask Times NFL writer Sam Farmer, and he will answer as many as he can online and in the Sunday editions of the newspaper throughout the season. Email questions to sam.farmer@latimes.com

Question: On any given football telecast (college or pro) the guys in the broadcast booth never stop talking. Since the color guy seems to talk more and is generally more knowledgeable, is he paid more? And by how much?

Norm Zareski, Palos Verdes Estates

Farmer: First, let’s look at the two different jobs. For my money, NBC’s Al Michaels is the NFL’s best play-by-play man. Fred Gaudelli, “Sunday Night Football” producer, has a great analogy for what Michaels does: “Al’s like an air-traffic controller who’s simultaneously landing his own plane.”

Now for the money part. While networks don’t make those salary numbers public, it’s a safe bet that both play-by-play announcers and color analysts are doing just fine in the paycheck department. In 2012, Liz Mullen of Sports Business Journal, citing industry sources, reported the highest-paid play-by-play men were Bob Costas and Michaels at NBC, Joe Buck at Fox, and Jim Nantz at CBS and that each earned in the range of $5 million a year.

Mullen reported ESPN’s Chris Berman and Mike Tirico were one tier down, making in the neighborhood of $3 million. Wrote Mullen: “A top pregame show analyst and a network’s No. 1 game analyst could draw between $500,000 and $2 million a year, agents said, depending on a number of factors, including popularity, the broadcaster’s time with the network and when the deal was signed.”

Keep in mind, those numbers are from 2012 so they could be dated, and I’ve got to believe a personality such as Cris Collinsworth or ESPN’s Jon Gruden would be off the charts in comparison to other color analysts.

Regardless, after eyeing those numbers, feel free to sign me up.

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Question: On onside kicks, I’ve noticed that receiving teams always try to possess the ball in the field of play while kicking teams also try to do the same, and certainly with mixed success. Can the receiving team just bat the ball out of bounds without losing possession? Do the rules state that the receivers must control/possess the ball first? If it’s possible to just bat the ball out of bounds, then why all the struggles to gain possession?

Tom Bruzda, Wildomar

Farmer: The receiving team doesn’t need to recover the ball within the field of play to gain possession. The NFL rules read: “When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines and is touched last by receiving team, it is receiver’s ball at out-of-bounds spot.”

So why don’t teams just knock the ball out of bounds? For that, I went to Dallas Cowboys vice president and player personnel director Stephen Jones, one of Jerry Jones’ sons and a former Arkansas linebacker.

“That can be a real mess up, trying to bat a moving ball. More than likely, you’re going to hit it straight up. We’d rather just catch it. That’s why we’ve got the hands team. Now, if it’s haulin’ [butt], our guys on the line are told to let it go past them. ... Battin’ an oblong object, there’s no tellin’ what’s fixin’ to happen. If you’ve got the guys who can catch it, you want them to secure it and get down.”