Is there a correct way to fight over money? In church? The sports arena is unlike other American workplaces, part business and part cathedral. Worshippers fill this church on what feels like high holidays, praising, believing, Tebow-ing, shouting to the heavens. But here come the jangling of the collection plates again and again, interrupting the spiritual connection to remind us there is always business to be done. It is all merely entertainment, obviously, but that combination — part business, part cathedral — makes what are supposed to be fun and games feel more hostile sometimes. The gulf between athletes and the fans who pay them is paved with money and resentment, this merging of emotions and economics making sports feel differently than the rest of entertainment.
Paying customers don’t get angry with musicians, comedians or movie stars for how rich they get for doing something silly and fun. Ever hear anyone say Bono, Chris Rock or Will Smith are overpaid? Anyone even know what they earn? You make us feel good and sway in your talented grasp, we don’t begrudge you your dollars … unless you happen to work in sports.
Over here, basketball’s owners and players can’t agree how to split billions. Over there, St. Louis builds a statue for champion Albert Pujols while wondering how many hundreds of millions it is going to take to keep him from leaving. Those numbers don’t make any sense to the hard-working fan who comes home from work dirty and either can’t afford to go to the game or is hurt by the cost of parking and refreshments while at it. But the numbers are distributed by sports media in a way that Rolling Stone Magazine doesn’t cover the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger’s earnings less public than Chad Henne’s. So there’s no use making the point, as local basketball player James Jones does, that Dwyane Wade is actually vastly underpaid, his value three or four times what he earns in salary — and far more than that if he happened to have a stronger union and played in a truly open market like baseball’s. (Alas, basketball’s union is so flimsy that a few years ago the sport changed the actual basketball, a fairly important piece of equipment, without even consulting the players.)
But let’s put this in more empathetic terms. Let’s make it the kind of money more people can understand. And let’s make the job painful. Let’s make the career lifespan short, too. Let’s talk about running backs.
The average NFL career is about three years. Running backs get used up fast as Iphone batteries and have to do their earning quickly because of it. An annual salary of half a million dollars — what Houston’s Arian Foster, Chicago’s Matt Forte and Cleveland’s Peyton Hillis earn — is very nice in most, less violent workplaces but isn’t going to make you very wealthy if you have to stretch a few years of earning over the next three decades as you limp toward retirement age. Running backs and boxers are the only two positions anywhere in sport where people quit in their prime, walking away from glory and applause and earning early. Why? Because it really, really hurts. Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Robert Smith, Tiki Barber and Ricky Williams leave early; quarterbacks don’t.