Speaking of debt, Sports Illustrated released its annual "Fortunate 50" report - a list of the 50 top-earning American athletes, combining both salary/winnings and endorsements.
Click the link above to read the whole list. Here are some of my favorites, especially those raking in the dough who are not even playing! (I've listed them according to their top 50 ranking.)
1. Tiger Woods - $99,700,000 (down from last year because of his knee injury and the ending of his Buick sponsorship.) $92 mil of that is endorsement money. How great a hold does Tiger have on this list? He has a $50 mill lead on 2nd place: Phil Mickelson.
4. Alex Rodriguez - $39,000,000. $33 mil is salary... remember this is for 1 year! That's about $204,000 per game - or $45,000 every time he goes to the plate. Wow.
10. Peyton Manning - $27,000,000. The NFL's highest on the list. But Peyton has tons of endorsements; his salary is only $14.5 mil.
11. Dale Earnhardt Jr. - $26,600,000 - Not even close to NASCAR's top winner, but easily NASCAR's top earner. $22 mil of his money is endorsements.
17. Stephon Marbury - $24,000,000 - Nearly all of this is salary paid by the New York Knicks as Marbury never played a minute. He was healthy, but NY refused to play him because of his poor attitude - but boy did they have to pay him!
22. Steve Francis - $22,000,000 - all salary, Francis did not play a minute in the NBA and was not even on a team! Portland had the privilege of signing this paycheck.
26. Barry Zito - $18,600,000 - all salary. This is one of my favorites. A couple of years ago the SF Giants signed Zito to a 7 year, $126 mil contract and Zito has been a losing pitcher ever since. Zito is due to make $20 mil a year through 2013.
28. Tom Brady - $18,000,000 - only 8 mil is in salary - what a bargain. However, his supermodel wife, Gisele Bundchen, is set to make $40 mil this year. It must be embarrassing to make less money then your wife! :)
44. Jason Schmidt - $15,750,000 - the LA Dodgers signed Schmidt to a 3 year/$47 mil contract. The Dodgers are glad they are finally in the last year of that deal - when the contract is finished, the pitcher will have played in 6 games. (And the Dodgers wish it wasn't that many, as Schmidt's post-surgery fast ball topped 84 on the radar.
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I would argue (almost said bet!)that most of these people also borrowed money to pay for their houses and cars. In the words of Patrick Ewing, "we make alot of money, but we spend alot of money too."
Or Allen Iverson who in the strike season had to return 7 of his leased cars and not pay his American Express because he had no cash.
The most Ironic is Derrik Thomas who died with a 10 million dollar contract, no life insurance and his wife had to sell their houses and cars just to pay their debts and was left with little to nothing.
Money may well be the root of all evil, but it is also a curse to many people.
Thus I considered all the activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold it was vanity and striving after the wind and there was no profit under the sun. Ecc. 2:11
I think what we all agree upon, it's not how much you have earned, its what you have learned about God in your labor and life.
I found this interesting (and depressing), but what was really interesting in this issue, was the cover article about the IA high school coach that was murdered (A Good Man Down). Not because of how the community rallied around the family of the victim, but also how they vowed to pray and support the family of the murderer, one of whom was a player on the coach's team.
By the way, who publishes the fortunate 50 of the Christian Pastor/Author/Musical world? THAT would be some interesting reading...
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