I love a good list, and this is about as good as they come (courtesy of SI.com)
Ranking the 50 highest-earning athletes in the U.S.
- Tiger Woods: $127.9m last year, including $105m in endorsements. “With close to $800 million in total earnings on and off the course over his 13-year career, Tiger should become the first billion-dollar athlete in the next two years — and he’s still only 32.” And that gets you Elin, which is a good thing.
- Phil Mickelson: $62.4m.
- LeBron James: $40.5m. (who needs college, right?)
- Floyd Mayweather Jr.: $40.3m.
- Kobe Bryant: $35.5m. With $16m in endorsements, like sponsors kinda sorta forgot about that whole “issue” that took place in Colorado a few years back. Just sayin’…
- Shaq: $35.0m. Funny how Shaq and Kobe are still inseparable.
- A-Rod: $35.0m. “Assuming A-Rod plays out his new mammoth 10-year, $275 million deal, he’ll have earned $445 million in base salary alone over the course of what would be a 24-year career.“
- Kevin Garnett: $31.0m.
- Peyton Manning: $30.5m. And no Gisele.
- Derek Jeter: $30.0m. Cap’n Jetes, still on the list. And you needed another reason to hate him, or just want to be him?
With all the hubbub surrounding Joba’s first start tonite (not to mention all the second-guessing), Larry Dubrow at CBSSports.com had this to say:
Just how anticipated is Joba’s starting-rotation bow? The broadcast networks waved the white flag, serving up a mix of House reruns (“House makes an improbable diagnosis and acts all ornery and whatnot”) and election coverage. The NHL bumped the potential Game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs back to Wednesday so as not to intrude upon the low-brimmed righty’s spotlight dance. The NBA delayed the start of the 2008 Finals by two days, just in case the country needs Wednesday to digest the beacon of magnificent awesomeness that is Joba.So outside of the expected — a no-hitter, a quasi-religious experience, the dawning of a new age in contemporary sports and, indeed, Western civilization — what can we expect from Joba’s first A-team night on the big stage? It’ll probably go something like …
8:28 p.m.: Joba throws his 71st and final pitch of the evening. It is a wonderful pitch, an otherworldly pitch, a cruel pitch, a slider. This slider is to all sliders that preceded it what Alec Baldwin is to Java Man, what brie is to Kraft American singles. It goes for a called third strike and Lyle Overbay retreats dugout-ward, demoralized. On his way off the field, Joba tips his cap ever-respectfully to the fans, who respond by lapsing into euphoria-induced seizures.Awesome! Well played, sir.
Maybe I’ve said it before. A time or two, right? Just in case you forgot: I hate Kyle Farnsworth. Bigtime. He’s doing his best to botch the key role he was brought in to do a few years ago, but has yet to do: hold down the 8th inning role. Now, with Joba moving to the rotation, the Yanks need Farnsworthless to step up and all he continues to do is step back.
UPDATE: Every now and then, I take a peek around the Statcounter “keyword analysis” to see how some of you guys find me, if not from a link elsewhere. Right now, the number one search criteria (over the last 2 weeks or so) that brought you guys here is “I hate Kyle Farnsworth“. Congrats, guys. There’s lotsa room in the pool, c’mon in! Oh yeah, there was one who searched “kyle farnsworth sucks”, too. Feel free to identify yourselves!
As a result of this well-dispersed dislike for Farnsworthless, I created the following group on Yahoo! Groups: I Hate Kyle Farnsworth. Please come and join.
Group name: ihatekylefarnsworth
Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ihatekylefarnsworth
1999 - In the first-year player’s draft, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays selected North Carolina State University prep star Josh Hamilton as their top pick. It was the first time since 1993, when Alex Rodriguez was selected, that a high school player has been chosen first.
What Josh Hamilton has gone thru is nothing short of staggering. From “best prospect ever” to coke addiction to leading the AL in nearly everything. Ponder this from Albert Chen’s cover story on Hamilton from this past week’s issue of SI.com:
When did he hit rock bottom? Hamilton thinks about this for a moment. So many low points to choose from. No, it wasn’t the time the check he made out to a crack dealer bounced and he had to ask his father-in-law to go and give the dealer $2,000 cash. No, it wasn’t the time after a party when he ripped the rearview mirror off a friend’s truck, punched out the windshield and was thrown in jail. No, rock bottom, he says, was the night in the late summer of 2005 when he awoke from a crack binge in a trailer with a half-dozen strangers around him; with nowhere else to go, he appeared like a ghost at his grandmother’s door — his sunken face as white as snow, his 6′ 4″ frame shrunk from 230 pounds to 180. “He’d be at the lowest of lows,” says [father-in-law] Chadwick, “and he’d sink lower.”
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