Roger Staubach’s net worth is estimated at $600 million. That makes him the wealthiest living player in NFL history, by a significant margin. Staubach earned less than $1 million total across his 11-season playing career with the Dallas Cowboys. Nearly everything else came from a commercial real estate company. He built it during his final playing years and sold it decades later for a fortune. This piece breaks down how a Naval Academy quarterback turned a modest football salary into the largest net worth any former NFL player has ever reached.
Roger Staubach Net Worth: The Numbers Behind the $600 Million Estimate
Multiple financial trackers place Staubach’s net worth at $600 million. That figure has stayed remarkably consistent for years. Most of his wealth sits in a completed transaction rather than volatile assets, which explains the stability. Some estimates run as high as $650 million once his continued Jones Lang LaSalle earnings and personal investments get factored in.
Career NFL earnings barely register next to that total. Staubach’s rookie salary with Dallas in 1969 was just $25,000. His highest annual salary, reached late in his career, was around $160,000. That places him among the top names in our quarterback wealth encyclopedia. His football paycheck was smaller than what many practice squad players earn today.
His on-field résumé still matters to the larger story. Staubach led the Cowboys to five Super Bowl appearances. He won two of them and earned Super Bowl MVP honors in Super Bowl VI. He retired in 1979 with a .746 winning percentage as a starter, one of the highest marks in NFL history. He also threw the pass that gave football the term “Hail Mary.” That 1975 playoff miracle against Minnesota is still referenced in football broadcasts today.
The Staubach Company: A $613 Million Sale
Building a Real Estate Empire While Still Playing
Staubach started preparing for life after football years before he needed to. After the 1970 season, he began working during the offseason as a real estate broker for Henry S. Miller Company, a respected Texas commercial real estate firm. Henry Miller himself mentored Staubach directly. He taught him the fundamentals of the business that would eventually make him a fortune. In 1977, two years before his retirement, Staubach left the Miller firm. He founded The Staubach Company with a single business partner, Robert Holloway Jr.
The company specialized in commercial real estate and tenant representation. It helped major corporations find and negotiate office space across the country. It grew steadily through the 1980s and 1990s, developing office buildings in some of the country’s most expensive markets. Clients included McDonald’s and AT&T, names that lent the young firm instant credibility in an industry that typically rewards decades of history over a young company built by a former athlete. By 2008, The Staubach Company employed roughly 1,100 people across 50 offices nationwide. More than 300 of those employees held equity in the firm. Staubach built that structure deliberately, so the eventual payoff would reach far beyond himself alone.
The Jones Lang LaSalle Deal
As his client base increasingly operated globally, Staubach recognized his firm needed international reach it didn’t have on its own. In 2008, he agreed to merge The Staubach Company with Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle, a much larger global real estate services firm. The deal closed on July 11, 2008. It was structured as a multi-year buyout worth roughly $650 million total. That included an initial payment of $613 million, plus additional performance-based earnouts that continued paying out through 2013.
Staubach personally owned about 12% of the company at the time of the sale. His individual share from the initial payment alone was roughly $73 million. Another $140 million in potential earnouts was tied to the company’s performance under its new ownership. By 2013, when the final earnout arrived, Staubach and his children’s trust had grossed more than $100 million from the transaction combined. An additional $36.9 million performance bonus that year pushed his total take from the sale toward $675 million by some estimates. That figure spreads across the trust, his share, and the equity he’d distributed to longtime employees over the years.
Life After the Sale
Staubach didn’t walk away once the deal closed. He stayed on as executive chairman of JLL’s Americas region. In that role, he helped oversee the integration of the two companies and maintained the client relationships he’d built over three decades. During this period, he earned an estimated $12 million a year in salary and bonuses. That reportedly made him the highest-paid retired athlete in the world at the time. He finally retired from that role in 2018, a full four decades after he started selling real estate during his football offseasons.
Staubach has said the feeling of selling his company rivaled winning a championship. “The feeling you have when winning a Super Bowl is fantastic,” he said, “and the feeling I had when we accomplished having somebody else want to buy our company is still a great feeling.” That comparison says something. It came from a two-time Super Bowl champion, after all, who described a business deal in the same way as a championship.
NFL Career and Playing Earnings
Dallas drafted Staubach in 1964, but he couldn’t join the team right away. He’d enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1961. His military commitment, including a tour of duty in Vietnam, kept him out of the NFL until 1969. He was 27 years old by the time he played his first professional snap. That’s a late start for any quarterback, which makes his eventual career achievements even more unusual by comparison.
Staubach quickly became known for late-game heroics. He earned the nickname “Captain Comeback” for his habit of rescuing games in the fourth quarter, often when Dallas looked all but finished. He led Dallas to six NFC Championship games. He reached five Super Bowl appearances along the way, winning Super Bowl VI and Super Bowl XII. He retired after the 1979 season with more than 22,000 passing yards and 153 touchdowns. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him in 1985, cementing a legacy built in barely a decade of play.
Roger Staubach Career Earnings by Year
Staubach’s NFL salary looks almost unbelievably small next to his real estate fortune.
| Period | Team | Cash Earnings |
|---|---|---|
| 1969-1979 (Cowboys) | Dallas Cowboys | $900,000 (approx.) |
| 2008 (Staubach Company sale) | Jones Lang LaSalle | $73 million (initial payment) |
| 2008-2013 (earnouts and equity) | Jones Lang LaSalle | $140 million+ (potential earnouts) |
| Career NFL Total | — | $1 million (approx.) |
Other Business Ventures and Assets
Staubach’s business life extended beyond real estate, too. He co-owned Hall of Fame Racing, a NASCAR Cup Series team, alongside former Cowboys teammate Troy Aikman. That partnership let two Dallas football legends stay connected to competition long after their playing careers ended, even in a completely different sport. He’s also built a notable art collection over the years, including pieces by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, works that have themselves appreciated considerably in value since he acquired them. His real estate holdings beyond the company he built include a sprawling Dallas estate valued around $15 million, along with additional properties in Florida and California.
Staubach has also stayed active on corporate boards well past his formal retirement from JLL. He lends his name and business judgment to companies looking for a director with genuine large-scale operating experience. That kind of board work rarely makes headlines the way a stadium appearance does. It still adds a quiet, recurring income stream on top of everything else. It also reflects a broader truth about how Staubach has approached money since 1977. Build something real, stay involved, and let compounding do the rest of the work over a very long horizon.
His annual income today is drawn from real estate ventures, board positions, and endorsements. That income is estimated at $20 million to $30 million a year, even years after formally retiring from JLL. This ongoing stream helps explain why his net worth has held near $600 million, rather than declining the way some fortunes do once the primary earner steps back from daily involvement.
Personal Life
Staubach has been married to Marianne since 1965, and the couple has five children together. He’s used his wealth to fund the Roger Staubach Foundation, which he’s largely financed with his own money rather than relying on outside donors. The foundation has made significant contributions to the Children’s Cancer Fund and Genesis Women’s Shelter, among other causes, reflecting priorities the couple has kept consistent for decades rather than chasing whatever cause happens to be trending.
Staubach received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the highest civilian honors in the United States. That recognition covered both his football career and his business and philanthropic work, an unusually broad basis for the honor compared to most athlete recipients. He’s remained a visible figure in Dallas business and civic circles well into his eighties, still lean and active by most public accounts. He still occasionally weighs in on the deals and developments shaping the city’s commercial real estate scene.
Early Life and Naval Academy Career
Roger Thomas Staubach was born on February 5, 1942, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the only child of Robert and Elizabeth Staubach. He grew up in Silverton, a suburb northeast of Cincinnati, in a tight-knit Catholic household that valued discipline and hard work. He graduated from Purcell High School in 1960, where he’d already begun showing the competitive instincts that would define his football career. He spent one year at the New Mexico Military Institute before enrolling at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1961.
Staubach’s college career began to flourish once he reached Annapolis. In the famous 1963 Army-Navy game, played with President John F. Kennedy performing the ceremonial coin toss, Staubach led Navy to a 31-14 win over Army. That same year, he won the Heisman Trophy after racking up 25 total touchdowns, becoming the first Naval Academy player to capture the award. His military commitment then delayed his professional debut by nearly six full years, a sacrifice that would have ended most players’ NFL dreams entirely before they ever started.
FAQ
What is Roger Staubach’s net worth in 2026?
Staubach’s net worth is estimated at $600 million in 2026. That makes him the wealthiest living former NFL player, well ahead of names like Tom Brady and Fran Tarkenton.
How much did Roger Staubach earn during his NFL career?
Staubach earned less than $1 million in total NFL salary across 11 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. That’s a tiny fraction of his eventual net worth.
How much did Roger Staubach make selling The Staubach Company?
Jones Lang LaSalle acquired The Staubach Company for approximately $613 million in an initial 2008 payment. Additional earnouts pushed the total deal value closer to $650 million to $675 million by 2013.
Did Roger Staubach win a Super Bowl?
Yes. Staubach won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys, Super Bowl VI and Super Bowl XII. He earned Super Bowl MVP honors in the first of those wins.
Is Roger Staubach richer than Tom Brady?
According to most current net worth estimates, yes. Staubach’s $600 million fortune places him ahead of Tom Brady on nearly every list of the wealthiest former NFL players.
Roger Staubach’s net worth stands as the clearest example in NFL history of business success completely eclipsing a playing career. He earned less money in 11 NFL seasons than some active players make in a single game check today. Yet by building a real estate company slowly, deliberately, and years before he needed the income, he turned a modest football salary into the largest fortune any former NFL player has ever assembled. Roger Staubach’s net worth isn’t just the richest among NFL legends. It’s a blueprint for what patient, long-term business building can produce, and it’s a story that keeps proving relevant every time a new athlete tries to plan for life after the final whistle.
