SI.com compiled a ranking of the 50 highest-earning American athletes and discovered that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are at the top of the list.
1. Tiger Woods
Pro Golf
Last Year’s Rank: 1
Salary/Winnings: $7,737,626
Endorsements: $92,000,000
Total: $99,737,626
Tiger sacrificed millions in appearance fees during his year off to recover from knee surgery, but replaced his lucrative Buick deal — voided by mutual consent — with a new one from AT&T.
2. Phil Mickelson
Pro Golf
Last Year’s Rank: 2
Salary/Winnings: $6,350,356
Endorsements: $46,600,000
Total: $52,950,356
Like Tiger, Phil no longer counts on a car-maker in his endorsement portfolio. (Ford chose not to re-sign him.) He still has lucrative deals with Rolex, Callaway, Exxon, Barclay’s and KPMG.
3. LeBron James
Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA)
Last Year’s Rank: 3
Salary/Winnings: $14,410,581
Endorsements: $28,000,000
Total: $42,410,581
LeBron has one more season left under his deal before he can opt out. If Cleveland doesn’t show it’s Finals-worthy by next spring, expect the Knicks to come in with a huge offer.
4. Alex Rodriguez
New York Yankees (MLB)
Last Year’s Rank: 6 (tie)
Salary/Winnings: $33,000,000
Endorsements: $6,000,000
Total: $39,000,000
We’re in the middle of A-Rod’s peak earning power in his middle-loaded, 10-year megadeal: He’ll make another $33 million in 2010 and then gradually decrease to a “normal” $20 million by ‘17.
The Big Bargaining Chip? Regardless of his trade to Cleveland, Shaq is in the final year of the five-year, $100 million deal he signed while with Miami. It’s the largest expiring deal in the NBA.
No. 10 Peyton Manning
Indianapolis Colts (NFL)
Last Year’s Rank: 9
Salary/Winnings: $14,500,000
Endorsements: $13,000,000
Total: $27,000,000
NFL’s top endorser has distributed $500,000 in grants in ‘09 through his PayBack Foundation to charities in Indianapolis, near his alma mater (Tennessee) and his hometown, New Orleans.
It’s amazing that the highest paid NFL player (Peyton Manning) barely cracked the top 10. Granted, the NFL only has a 17-game regular season, but you’d think that for what football players put their bodies through every season that they would make more than baseball players, golfers and basketball players.
Although he is pitching well this season despite his overall numbers, seeing Zito’s name on this list at No. 26 makes me shudder. He’s the third best pitcher (maybe fourth depending on how high you value Randy Johnson) on his own club, yet he’s the 26th highest-earning American athlete. Still, it should be noted that Zito donates $400 for every strikeout that he throws to the Strikeouts for Troops charity that he created to help hospitals treat soldiers that are wounded in military operations. In fact, as the article notes, a lot of the guys on this list give thousands of dollars to charities every year and that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Most people in America, and especially Los Angeles (thanks to bus advertisements everywhere), know that David Beckham plays for the LA Galaxy. The only problem is that he kinda doesn’t. With all his English national team World Cup qualifiers and his loan to AC Milan, his MLS season is about as long as a cocktail weenie.
After the tragic death of Michael Jackson last week, David Beckham’s future in American soccer has been called into question. How could these two seemingly unrelated things be related? Well, SPORTSbyBROOKS has all the answers. Due to spatial constraints, let me give you a quick summation: AEG is a corporation operating concert venues/events worldwide, including all those canceled comeback concerts in England with Michael Jackson. Davd Beckham has been a flop since arriving in America, his potential for igniting interest in soccer in America has fizzled. He is now a financial drain on his team.
And, of course, the owners of the Los Angeles Galaxy that could really use the cash on this year’s balance sheet to offset losses in other parts of the business… AEG.
On top of it all, the best thing that could happen to the popularity of U.S. soccer is happening today in South Africa as the U.S. men’s national team takes on Brazil for the chance to hoist their first international soccer cup in modern history. AEG didn’t need to invest in David Beckham to raise soccer’s profile in America; they needed to invest in U.S. Soccer. (Or better insurance.)
Hell yeah. Despite our loss to Brazil in the final today. I can’t agree more with Brooks’ sentiment that we should look to America for American soccer. While we don’t have nearly the farm system of the global soccer powerhouses like Spain and Brazil, the infrastructure is certainly there, as well as the ability. Remember when American ice hockey was laughable when compared to the USSR? Neither do I, being born in ‘82 and all. But I saw the movie. Well hey, where did that go?
Having been a fan of American soccer since the ‘96 (update: my bad, 94) World Cup here, I’ve never been able to talk much about it with other people. This past week, once I told them what had happened with Spain, I’ve never felt as much interest and enthusiasm for an upcoming soccer match as this morning. Keep it up America (and the LA Galaxy’s real hero, Landon Donovan) and good luck next month when we play our southern rivals, Mexico.
And as long as we’re on the subject of Michael Jackson and USA soccer, you gotta check out this memorial jersey.
While watching the biggest game in U.S. soccer history during a Lions Club party at Far Bar (they never let me down because they always let me in) I couldn’t help but wonder what the strange background noise was throughout the broadcast. At first I thought the nice grandma next to me had fainted into her Wasabi Fries, but thanks to Martin Rogers at Yahoo! Sports I now know (psst…you can hear for yourself in Rogers’ article), and dread its upcoming World Cup preponderance:
If you’re still not familiar with the term, the vuvuzela is the instrument that provides that horrendous droning, foghorn-like sound that has assaulted eardrums as a constant accompaniment to coverage of the World Cup warmup event. And you haven’t heard the last of it.
The vuvuzela is seen as an integral part of the soccer-watching experience in South Africa and FIFA has already given the green light to its use in next year’s World Cup finals. That could mean a month’s worth of mind-numbing horn blowing as the musical backdrop to the greatest tournament in soccer.
Something clearly needs to be done — but without offending the South African people or interfering with their proud traditions.
Agreed. Goodness gracious, is this the sound I’m going to have to listen to for the 20-some games I’ll watch next summer? I know it’s a different culture over there and we always need to be respectful of the traditions of others, but oh man, it’s like playing a match in a bee hive. I hope the droves of new viewers in America of the next World Cup aren’t turned away from the sport when they hear it for 3 hours.
Producing the best soccer it has played in recent memory, the United States men’s national team came within a whisker Sunday of pulling off its second staggering international soccer upset in just five days.
After shutting out Spain, the world’s No. 1-ranked team, 2-0, in midweek, the U.S. was leading Brazil by the same score at halftime in the final of the FIFA Confederations Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Then, the five-time world champions and defending Confederations Cup champions regrouped and came back with a vengeance.
Three goals in the second half, the first scored after a mere 45 seconds, earned Brazil a 3-2 victory as it won the eight-nation tournament for a record third time. The Brazilians also won the event in 1997 and 2005.
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (06/25/2009 @ 5:32 pm)
Spain’s national team, the No. 1-ranked professional soccer team in the world, had been unbeaten a world-record-tying 35 games in a row. They had also won a world-record-tying 15 games in a row. But then they met the United States in the 2009 Confederations Cup. They met the Americans and the Americans beat them. This is the same U.S. National team that has never won a World Cup, a Confederations Cup, or made any FIFA records of considerable note. Nevertheless, they outplayed their Spanish opponents on Wednesday, defeating them 2-0 in front of a shocked South African crowd.
Although Spain outshot the U.S. 18-9, nothing could get by goalkeeper Tim Howard who was solid the entire game. Goals by Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey were enough to propel the U.S. into the finals.
Now the Americans will face Brazil, a team they have only beaten once in national competition. Earlier today, Brazil defeated South Africa 1-0 in a hard fought contest. But just because Brazil is in yet another final does not mean they are unstoppable. It took 88 minutes for Brazil to score, when Daniel Alves knocked a direct kick into the net against a highly underrated South African squad.
Although the ripple effect may, unfortunately, not be as large here in the U.S., the fact that Spain’s national team was beaten buy a bunch of Americans is making news around the world. Nobody, and I mean nobody, expected this to happen. I didn’t, sports critics didn’t, the handful of American soccer fans didn’t, Spain didn’t, and even the irritating ESPN2 commentators didn’t (it’s OK to show a tad bit of nationalism, you bozos).
Jim Rome was right in his telecast today: this victory won’t put U.S. soccer on the map. Still, it’s amazing.
You can watch the U.S play Brazil in the Cofederations Cup final on Sunday at 11 AM on ESPN.
This would be a huge upset if the U.S. men can pull out a win in this semifinal match in the Confederations Cup. Spain has won a record 35-straight matches.
The match is in the middle of the second half and is being broadcast on ESPN. You can also see the MatchCast here.
Update: USA won, 2-0, and will move on to the final. And a correction on the Spain streak — they hadn’t lost in 35-straight matches. There were a few ties during that run.
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (06/21/2009 @ 11:59 pm)
At the Confederations Cup in Rustenburg, South Africa, the U.S. National Team is continuing to surprise everyone as earlier today they beat Egypt to advance to the semifinals.
The Americans had looked to be heading out of the tournament after losses to Italy and Brazil, but Charlie Davies, Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey scored in a vastly improved performance to edge the African champions for a place in the next round on goal difference.
“All of the critics in America who said we were no good after losing to Italy and Brazil, let’s see what they say now,” Bradley said. “We had to play 90 of 180 minutes against two of the top five teams in the world with 10 men.”
The United States kept 11 men on the field all game after a red card in each of its previous two games and it showed. Where the Americans had labored previously, they shone throughout and could have scored even more.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, expected the United States to go far at all in this tournament. The Confederations Cup started, which is held every four years, pits the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships (CAF, CONMEBOL, UEFA, AFC, OFC, CONCACAF), along with the FIFA World Cup winner and the host country. The U.S. National Team is playing great soccer right now and hopefully they will continue with this energy up till next year’s World Cup.
They will face Spain in the semifinals on Wednesday.
How many of you know that the World Cup qualifiers are in full swing? I admit some kind of hazy knowledge of their existence, but it seems taken for granted that the U.S. team will make it into the Finals without any trouble. For those of you with at least a passing interest in next year’s World Cup in South Africa, I present a nice little article about our team written by Jonah Freedman over at Sports Illustrated:
Well, that was a relief. The U.S. national team emerged from its toughest week yet of 2010 World Cup qualifying, bruised but standing tall. After getting abused and flattened in Costa Rica 3-1 last Wednesday, the Americans responded by rallying on Honduras 2-1 Saturday at Soldier Field, its first comeback win in World Cup qualifying in 24 years. The end result is that the U.S. stands in second place in the Hexagonal final round of CONCACAF qualifying with a 3-1-1 record and 10 points.
OK, if you’re still with me let’s remember that the Major League Soccer season has started, so if you get tired of baseball after hockey and basketball finish up, find your local team and take a gander.
A Manchester United football fan drove a minibus into a crowd of Barcelona supporters, killing four people after United lost in the European Champions League Final on Wednesday. Ten other people were reported wounded in the incident.
A police spokeswoman told Reuters news agency: “The driver passed the crowd, then made a U-turn and ran into them.”
He is now in police custody. Both teams have a large fan base in Nigeria.
“The man confessed to doing it on purpose,” police spokeswoman Rita Inoma Abbey told the BBC.
“He now says he doesn’t know why he did it, but it was an intentional act.”
Football fans across Africa closely follow the European leagues, which recruit some of the continent’s best players.
Earlier this month, a Kenyan Arsenal fan hanged himself after his team’s defeat in Champions League semi-final second leg by Manchester United.
I can’t emphasize this point enough: IT’S JUST A GAME. If you can’t handle your team losing to the point that you deem it necessary to take innocent lives because they root for a rival, then you shouldn’t follow sports - end of story.
OK, hands up everybody who knows the relegation system of Barclay’s Premier League. Nobody? No worries I gotcha covered. As the Associated Press reports (and I got this from Sports Illustrated btw):
Newcastle and Middlesbrough were relegated from the Premier League on Sunday, while Hull and Sunderland stayed up.
Newcastle lost 1-0 at Aston Villa and Middlesbrough was beaten 2-1 at West Ham to finish in the last three teams on the final day of the league season.
Hull lost 1-0 to newly crowned champion Manchester United and Sunderland went down 3-2 at home to third-place Chelsea.
Last-place West Bromwich Albion was already certain to go down and drew 0-0 at Blackburn.
If this will insult your intelligence as a “football” fan, then feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Let me quickly go through the idea of relegation: The 3 bottom-placed teams at the end of each season of the Premier League are busted down to what amounts to kind of a minor league system. The 3 top teams from that league take the place of the losers from the Premier League. Thus, the bottom of the roster in the Premier League changes quite a bit from season to season.
So let me propose an idea here. Relegation is something that basically doesn’t exist here stateside. But I think there’s an argument to be made that it could be advantageous to install something like that in some of the more inflated sports leagues we have. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (04/19/2009 @ 5:33 pm)
- SPORTSBYBROOKS reports that the Washington Nationals have fined Elijah Dukes for tardiness. Where was he? Signing autographs for little leaguers.
- TONYBLOGS was one of the countless sites that spotted this Washington Nationals wardrobe malfunction.
- Don’t care about European soccer? Well, head on over to GUNAXIN and take a look at who these players end up dating. Maybe then you’ll tune in to a game or two.
- THELOVEOFSPORTS ponders the current state of Michael Jordan.
- STET SPORTS has the trailer for the new Chris Cooley reality show, “The Cooley Zone” (which features his lovely wife, Christy, pictured). Chris and Christy — how cute! Count me in!
- THE SPORTZ ASSASSIN details a rumor that says that top high school prospect John Wall might be eligible for the NBA Draft this year.
- YARDBARKER has video of a ridonkulous soccer goal. It doesn’t look that odd in real time, but wait for the slo mo.
- Rick Reilly shadowed Kobe Bryant for a (game)day and ESPN has his report.
- SPORTSBYBROOKS laments that the two new NY ballparks have separate VIP areas for Very Important (a.k.a. Rich) People.
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (03/12/2009 @ 9:00 am)
MLS star Landon Donovan, who spent the last two months on loan with former German soccer champions Bayern Munich, has returned to the Los Angeles Galaxy. Though Donovan led the MLS with 20 goals scored the prior season, his performance with the German club in competitive matches was less than stellar. Unlike his Galaxy teammate David Beckham (who was asked by AC Milan to return), Bayern Munich has decided to pass on Donovan.
“I’m very excited to be back,” Donovan said after practice at the Home Depot Center. “I had a good time in Germany. It was a very interesting experience for a lot of reasons. Some good, some bad.
“You always wonder if you’re capable of playing on that level, and it quickly became apparent that I was and that I enjoyed it. But there is something distinctly different about the environment here” in the U.S.
“One of the building blocks of our team is now here,” said Galaxy Coach Bruce Arena, who can begin the serious work of putting together a starting 11 for the March 22 opener against D.C. United in Carson.
The Galaxy has failed to make the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, and Arena, who was hired last August as coach and general manager and subsequently became Donovan’s Manhattan Beach neighbor, has dismantled last-season’s side and started virtually from scratch.
“It’s going to take time for all of us to get to know each other and make adjustments,” he said. “I believe half our team is new, and that’s difficult. So it’s going to be important that early in the season we stick together.
I think I was one of the few who thought Donovan would be so successful in Germany that he would never return to the MLS. It’s funny how quickly professional soccer players can get the axe. Donovan only played in 11 matches (five friendly, six competitive) during his two-month stint in Germany and Bayern management quickly felt the relationship wasn’t working.
These types of overseas experiments are much different with the NBA and MLB. There’s no such thing as having a player on “loan.” Foreign talent is frequently signed (sometimes a bit too quickly), often to monster-sized contracts a la Daisuke Matsuzaka. If the player fails to produce, the owner is bound to a contract, whereas soccer clubs seem to simply pay players on loan on a per match basis. These “experiments” between professional soccer leagues seem logical actually, especially in these economic times. To owners, players are nothing more than an investment that may or may not reap rewards.
To be fair, Donovan did score a combined four goals in his five friendly matches in Germany. I expected Donovan to do well abroad, especially since their approach to the game suits his style of play. Oh well. At least the most dominant goal scorer in the MLS has returned to the team that needs him the most.
- SPORTSbyBROOKS.com has the story of Colts’ defensive end Dwight Freeney, who had the opportunity to learn a little bit about gold-digging women.
- THE LOVE OF SPORTS ponders what would have happened if the Kentucky Wildcats had defended the in-bounds pass in their crushing Eastern Regional Finals loss to Duke in 1992.
- Deadspin discusses weird Japanese baseball curses.
- TONYBLOGS.NET writes that David Beckham plans to own a MLS team after his career ends. Hopefully this means that High Maintenance Spice will remain in the public eye for a long, long time.
- Calvin Pace (yes, that Calvin Pace) wonders aloud whether or not his linebacker brethren Aaron Curry should be the No. 1 overall pick.
Ghanaian soccer player Solomon Opoku heard the Serbian fans screaming racist insults and turned around as they set upon him, hurling punches and abuse.
The attackers were supporters of Opoku’s team, determined that a black player shouldn’t take the field for their club.
Two days later, Olympique Marseille President Pape Diouf got a firsthand look at what his black players endure when he traveled to the team’s UEFA Cup match at Zenit St. Petersburg in northern Russia.
“What we went through was hideous,” Diouf, who is black, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It was the classic stuff, the bananas thrown at black players warming up, the monkey chants, obscene gestures. Not only does Zenit not hide the fact that no black player could play for this club, the fans say so themselves.”
Racism has become the scourge of European soccer stadiums. Whether the supporters are watching a minor league in Serbia or a major European competition such as the Champions League, matches are stubbornly plagued by prejudice from the Mediterranean Sea to the Ural Mountains.
Anti-racism campaigns aimed at fans have met with limited success at best, leaving the problem to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, and the Union of European Football Associations to clean up.
Soccer officials have condemned fan racism and issued fines. But penalizing clubs or nations in ways that would hurt both them and their fans — such as disqualification from tournaments, forfeiting points or stopping a match — is something they have been reluctant to do.
“You have countries, [like] Russia today, where racism is a quasi-official doctrine,” said Pascal Mignon, a French sociology researcher at the INSEP sporting institute. “In Russia, xenophobia is quite strong. So you will see it in a more powerful way, like you will in southern European countries like Spain or Italy.”
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (02/05/2009 @ 4:00 pm)
David Bekcham’s three-month stint in Italy playing for Serie A team AC Milan will conclude on March 8. Apparently, he’s had so much fun playing for the club that he wants out of his five-year $32.5 million MLS contract, of which he still has three years remaining.
“At the moment my lawyers are not talking to the Galaxy but I have expressed my desire to stay at AC Milan now and it’s just down to Milan and Galaxy to come to an agreement,” Beckham said. “I have enjoyed my time here. I knew I would enjoy it but I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I have and do as well as I have.”
Since arriving, Beckham has scored twice and helped to lift Milan up to second place in the Serie A standings.
He has also been included in Milan’s 25-man roster for UEFA Cup games against Werder Bremen on Feb. 18 and 26.
“I’ve expressed my desire to stay here for a while but at the moment I’m still a Galaxy player,” Beckham said. “I respect the Galaxy and everything they have done for me. They have always been great to me.
“But I hope they can come to an agreement and it’s down to the clubs now. At this point it’s out of my hands. I’ve said what my feelings are to both clubs.”
Honestly, I can’t blame him. I think we all saw this coming from the beginning. It’s kind of like when you’re in elementary school and you play basketball with your friends at recess or lunch. But your friends aren’t very good and you, well, you rock. Then one day some of the older and better players ask you to join them for a game. You have the choice of playing in a much more demanding and exciting competition or you could stay and play “Horse” for the umpteenth time with your friends. So, you compromise and tell your friends that it will just be one game. Of course you have the time of your life, knock down a couple buckets and get a pat on the back from the star sixth-grader. Then you tell your friends you will only play at recess. Then you’re telling them you’ll catch up with them walking home after school.
In this case, while Beckham has done well and made friends in the MLS, the league doesn’t offer the same experience as the EPL. Also, this isn’t about money, as Beckham would probably make less if he continued to play for AC Milan. There’s just a lot less pressure for Beckham when playing in Europe. He already established himself as a world-class player when playing for Manchester United so he doesn’t have to act like the poster child for a league like he does with the MLS. When he came over to the U.S., most Americans simply associated him with that movie and his hot wife. He really is a great player and frankly, he’s better than the MLS.
Think about it – would you rather play with Ronaldhino in beautiful Milan or (insert unknown player name here) in Los Angeles?
