"Only" $1,000,000.00

Greetings sports junkies and sports nerds! I am a lifetime fan of sports in general. I played football in high school as well as participated in track and field. I continue to be an active "athlete" today as I bowl in the winter months and golf during the summer. As a lifetime sports fan, nerd, nut, whatever, I have generated many opinions regarding sports. I thought I would enjoy sharing these opinions with whoever stumbles upon this blog. The blog is called svfd757'sBaseblog as baseball is my favorite sport, but I will talk about sports in general. This is my first foray into blogging so take is easy on me!

My first post is something I have thought a lot about recently. We as fans, and sportscasters in general, have almost forgotten how much one million dollars is. We hear about sports teams signing athletes to multi-million dollar multi-year deals, yet we don't fully remember how much money this is. My first idea is to put to paper how much a million dollars is. For example, $1,000,000.00 contains a lot of zeros. Considering the average american, according to the US census, makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $69,000.00. Notice how many fewer zeros are in that number.

At this point, I want to clarify my stance on this. I am in no way saying that these athletes do not deserve the money that they are being paid. These guys have to earn what they can while they can. Their careers are way shorter than a regular Joe, working everyday. I am simply thinking that we as fans need to keep in mind just how much money we are talking about.

I listen to The Fan ESPN radio out of Columbus, Ohio everyday. The radio in my truck is never on anything else. I was listening to Mike and Mike one morning and heard them talking about contracts that were recently signed by two baseball players. Greenie made a statement about how one guy got "shorted" because he was "only" signed for 64 million ($64,000,000.00) over 7 years. This caught me as stunning that 64 million dollars and only could be used in the same sentence. This is where the idea for this post was born. This contract is worth $9,142,857.14 a year. That is roughly 160 times my annual salary, and I make good money for where I live. This means that I would have to work for 160 years, assuming I do not get a raise, to make one year's worth of this athletes salary. Again, I am not complaining, I would absolutely cash that check if it were offered to me. The use of "only" in this conversation is what got me thinking. We need to keep in mind that the numbers we throw around when talking about salary of professional athletes are enormous.

Again, I respect professional athletes. The things they can do with the human body is nothing short of amazing. I would imagine that a majority of the people walking around have never seen a 100 mile per hour fast ball or tried to catch a pass from a quarterback while being drilled by a corner back. They make the money that they make mostly because the market dictates that rate of pay. We as fans contribute to this market because we pay to see them play while wearing our jerseys and hats. Heck, I wear Chief Wahoo socks when I go to watch my Tribe play ball. All of the revenue generated by the sales of this merchandise contributes to the amount owners pay their athletes.

These are just a few things to keep in mind when we are talking about athletes salaries or buying merchandise.

I hop you enjoyed this article. I hope to get some feedback and interaction with this topic and welcome you to my universe.