There have been a lot of crazy contracts in sports. Alex Rodriguez’s contract, which pays him $252 million over ten years, is often cited as the most outrageous, although baseball people will tell you that Mike Hampton getting $121 million for 7 years to pitch for the Rockies in the late 90s was even worse.
Basketball players are occasionally overpaid by the millions, making $20, $30 sometimes even $40 million more than they should over the course of six to eight years. This happens much less frequently in football and hockey because contracts are rarely guaranteed and both leagues have salary caps (basketball has a luxury tax). Furthermore hockey makes virtually nothing from its television contracts so it doesn’t generate the monstrous additional revenue that the other leagues, particularly football, do.
BECKHAM SIGNS FOR $250 MILLION OVER FIVE YEARS (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=399465&cc=5901)
This SOOOOOOOOOOOOO far blows all the bad contracts out of the water it is mind-boggling. The league gets virtually no revenue from television. It has smaller crowds and tickets are relatively inexpensive. There are limited luxury box sales. Where is the money going to come from? Is every tenth person in the US and another half million in Asia gonna buy Beckham’s Galaxy jersey?
And, Beckham says in the article that kids in America don’t play soccer. The boy needs to not put his pricey Adidas boots in his mouth right out of the shoot. I don’t have the numbers, but I’m sure the ratio of “kids” playing soccer versus football is well in excess of 20:1.
This is simply stupidity at its most extraordinary level.
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Fair points all. In addition, Rhoden’s implicit argument that blacks will take over from whites at quarterback once the position requires QBs who can run as well as pass seems inherently racist, no? Hey, there aren’t a lot of record-setting white sprinters these days, but I don’t know that I’d be standing up proclaiming that only black QBs can run and white QBs can do nothing but throw the ball (better than blacks). (From E.G.)
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