It depends on your perspective. But I think a majority say that they are. So let’s look at a couple examples. This examination has nothing to do with the people, just the financials…dollars and sense.

Let’s check the NFL:

Current salary of Joe Burrow QB of Cincinnati Bengals: 55 Million per year (current top salary in NFL).

55 million dollars to throw a football around. In anyone’s world that’s a hell of a lot of money. But let’s break this down a little more.

The NFL plays 17 regular season games. We will exclude playoffs because that is no guarantee.

Burrow’s average per game: $3,230,000

But we can break it down into actual playing time.

The offense is actually playing (snap to whistle) about 5 minutes on average per game.

—————–

Total Playtime = Number of Plays × Average Play Duration

Total Playtime = 60 plays × 5 seconds/play

Total Playtime = 300 seconds

Converted to Minutes

Total Playtime = 5 minutes

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Burrow’s salary per minute: $646,000 per minute

Burrows salary per second: $10,766 per second.

He gets this whether he throws 4 touchdowns, or 4 interceptions, win, or lose. Not shabby.

Let’s compare Joe Burrow and Johnny Unitas, considered the best QB in his era.

Unitas’ highest salary was $125,000 (about $600,000 in today’s dollars) per year. Burrow’s salary is 92x Unitas’ salary in inflation adjusted dollars.

Is the game harder now? Not really. I would argue the game was tougher then with all the rules that we have today to protect players.

I did not write this to go after Joe Burrow. He’s a great QB, top 5 certainly, in the NFL. I’m really examining the world in which someone, playing football, tennis, baseball, whatever, makes money that 99.99% of people on planet Earth can only fantasize having.

Let’s examine the MLB (Major League Baseball)

Gerrit Cole, starter pitcher for the New York Yankees.

2023 salary – 36 Million dollars

33 starts in 2023 = 1.09 Million per start

Starting pitchers are limited to 100 pitches per start these days. The days of starting pitchers completing games is long dead. Cole has 8 complete games in his career (2.6 %). Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins has 267 (45%).

So $1.09 Million divided by 100 = $10,900 per pitch.

Let me repeat that – he gets $10,900 every time he throws a baseball in a game.

The phrase, ‘Bread and Circuses’, comes from the Roman Empire.

noun. Something, as extravagant entertainment, offered as an expedient means of pacifying discontent or diverting attention from a source of grievance.

Roman emperors would have massive spectacles to divert people’s eyes and minds from the every day problems the empire was incapable, or unwilling, to address.  I would suggest the ‘Superbowl, or ‘World Series’, and other sport spectacles does exactly that. I am not saying we should not have these ‘spectacles’, or player’s salaries are out of whack with the world we live in…although one can make that argument. I certainly think they are.

I do find it fascinating when people on social media, or the legacy media, or just fans, pontificate that player ‘X’ is being disrespected because he or she is only getting ten million dollars instead of twelve million dollars a year. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with a society where average people, struggling to pay bills, are actually concerned, or emotionally invested, in millionaires getting a ‘good’ deal from billionaires.

So why this post? What does it have to with the Hive threat? We are being distracted by sports to not address vital problems facing this country. Enjoy your sports but don’t take your eyes off the big ball, the future of this world.

But, maybe that’s just me.

Fight the Hive.