How To Spend 35 Million Dollars
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by Dan Lewis
While Alex Rodriguez may not get his $35 million salary, it does seem at least feasible. But how much money is $35 million? I decided to span the world of sports to put it in perspective.
Competitve Eating
Remember Joey Chestnut, the American who wolfed down 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes last July 4th? First prize totaled $10,000 and "The Coveted Yellow Mustard Belt". Assuming he could repeat his eating prowess every day, he'd earn an annual eating salary of... $3.85 million. Or just over 12.5% of A-Rod's target, excluding the belt.
But don't worry, A-Rod! You can afford to challenge Mr. Chestnut. Let's say you wanted to, oh, eat hot dogs rapidly, all day every day, for the rest of the year. At five and a half hot dogs per minute, you'd wolf down 2,890,800 hot dogs next year (we're giving you February 29th off). Even without this coupon for a free dog, A-Rod would have to fork over $6.5 million. With that extra $28.5m, he can buy a whole lot of mustard.
Football
Peyton Manning signed a seven year, $98 million deal in 2004, or $14 million per season. Eli Manning's 2006 salary was just under $2 million. That means if A-Rod wanted to party down with the Mannings, he could give them each a 100% raise, and still have some spending money left over.
But no one wants to party with Peyton and Elisha. Hells no. Much rather party with Pac-Man. At ten dollar bills a second, A-Rod could make it rain for over forty days straight.
Where's Noah and his ark when you need him?
Tennis
Roger Federer is probably the best tennis player on the planet, and maybe throughout history. He's #2 on the all-time money list, behind Pete Sampras -- with career earnings of $36,007,078 (through 11/5/2007). A-Rod would earn in a year what Federer has in a whole career, and more than Andre Agassi's "paltry" $31,152,975.
What about Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal? The two of them have each earned just under $13 million, career-to-date. A-Rod's annual salary can buy their careers, and still have enough left over for either Jimmy Connors ($8,641,040, not counting for inflation) or all but about thirty other professional tennis players.
Or maybe A-Rod will take a year and sponsor Wimbledon? In 2007, the total prize pool for the British leg of tennis' grand slam was about 11 million British pounds, or about $23.6 million dollars. Even if you assume the prize pool will go up 8.7% -- the same amount it did after 2006 -- that will leave A-Rod with enough money to buy a Prince Citron OS tennis racket ($179.99 at Dick's, pictured right) for 51,472 of his closest friends. The main court at Wimbledon holds roughly 14,000 fans, and the second-largest holds 11,000, so figure that every fan would get one racket for each hand.
Hockey
Remember that hockey strike a few years back? Well, it cost a lot of people a lot of money. One person -- well, a company -- was the CBC, Canada's big TV/Radio conglomerate. One source estimated their loss at $20 million (American, Canadian, who knows) because they had to replace hockey programming with something even crappier. One cannot help but wonder if the CBC called up A-Rod and said, "Hey, strap on some ice skates for us and skate, we'll pay you $19 million! It's a great deal for us," only to hear Scott Boras laugh, muttering "nineteen... silly Chesterfield lovers" as he hung up.
Basketball
While it's en vogue to make this about Travis Henry, recall that Shawn Kemp was on the illegitimate child kick before Henry's first kid was a glimmer in his mom's eye. And as both Henry and Kemp learned, feeding all those mouths is 'spensive -- about $10,980 according to this chart to get a kid from birth to his first birthday. That's a bargain when you're banking $35 mill. You can father 3,187 kids this year and still have a bit of money left over. But you better get cracking, Mr. Rod, as you have to knock up a new woman every two hours and forty-five minutes. (During extra-inning games, we suggest availing yourself nicely of the seventh inning strech.)
Or you could just go gambling. You know, with Tim Donaghy and his $260,000 annual salary as a ref. Let's say you bankrolled the ref to the tune of one year's pay -- his pay, not yours -- and then another $260k for yourself. How many games would Donaghy have to fix to make you another $35 mil or so? Assuming you bet the farm and let it ride, a mere seven games.
Lawsuits
A-Rod may be headed for court -- divorce court. But other athletes have recently made their way their for more nefarious reasons. Isiah Thomas (and MSG) is on the hook for $11.6 million for sexual harassment. Harold Reynolds is seeking $5 million for breech of contract stemming from a sexual harassment claim against him. But sixteen point six million? That's not even half of what A-Rod wants!
Michael Vick's legal fees are estimated to go into the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, and may have a $250,000 fine levied against him. Oh, yeah, and he has to pay back $19.9 million to the Falcons. All together, that's a bit more than A-Rod can cover -- he's about a million short!
Where's Johnny Cochrane when you need him?
Oh, he's dead?
Poor A-Rod.
Looks like he may have to play a game or two in 2009.
