Friday
It's the Friday before the start of the NFL season, and that is a reason for happiness. These professional athetes and coaches bring a lot of much needed relief for a lot of people who frankly can't handle the prospect of another Monday without the pay-off of Monday Night Football at the end of it.
I don't normally endorse the work of millionaires. There are so few rich people in the world who've actually earned their fortunes. Most wealth is inherited, and the captains of industry were born to their positions like little princes. The best schools, the closest connections, family and friendship ties with other elites - and then the miracle of an executive job! Shocking.
Even the dot-com millionaires were the result of a well-timed market. Was Bill Gates a visionary, or just at the right place at the right time? What has Mark Cuban or Paul Allen really done that the marketplace didn't do for them?
But I digress. The millionaires that earn it are the football players and coaches. Theirs is a physically and mentally demanding profession that, at it's highest levels, still doesn't pay as much as the comparatively recreational games of basketball and baseball.
Football means jarring collisions and life-shortening tackles. It means practicing all week and then playing a game and taking, all told, hundreds of shots that are harder than other people have ever been hit in their entire lives.
Coaches spend long greulling hours in the office, the pressure to win overwhelming. If they don't produce, they have literally millions of people calling for them to be fired. Imagine if you had a disappointment at work and five million people screamed for your ouster.
And it's an entertainment product. In the end, they do it for me. And in return, I watch the commercials on their broadcasts (sometimes) and I buy the media that covers them and sometimes I buy their shirts and hats. And they get rich. Some of them get never-work-again rich. Others simply get buy-a-dry-cleaner-and-live-well rich. If they get good financial advice (which they seem to these days) post-career players need not bag groceries, wash cars, or put up with the crap that I put up with every day.
So here's to the millionaires who earn their millions. And to the only real "must see TV."
I don't normally endorse the work of millionaires. There are so few rich people in the world who've actually earned their fortunes. Most wealth is inherited, and the captains of industry were born to their positions like little princes. The best schools, the closest connections, family and friendship ties with other elites - and then the miracle of an executive job! Shocking.
Even the dot-com millionaires were the result of a well-timed market. Was Bill Gates a visionary, or just at the right place at the right time? What has Mark Cuban or Paul Allen really done that the marketplace didn't do for them?
But I digress. The millionaires that earn it are the football players and coaches. Theirs is a physically and mentally demanding profession that, at it's highest levels, still doesn't pay as much as the comparatively recreational games of basketball and baseball.
Football means jarring collisions and life-shortening tackles. It means practicing all week and then playing a game and taking, all told, hundreds of shots that are harder than other people have ever been hit in their entire lives.
Coaches spend long greulling hours in the office, the pressure to win overwhelming. If they don't produce, they have literally millions of people calling for them to be fired. Imagine if you had a disappointment at work and five million people screamed for your ouster.
And it's an entertainment product. In the end, they do it for me. And in return, I watch the commercials on their broadcasts (sometimes) and I buy the media that covers them and sometimes I buy their shirts and hats. And they get rich. Some of them get never-work-again rich. Others simply get buy-a-dry-cleaner-and-live-well rich. If they get good financial advice (which they seem to these days) post-career players need not bag groceries, wash cars, or put up with the crap that I put up with every day.
So here's to the millionaires who earn their millions. And to the only real "must see TV."
posted by fiduciary at 9:42 AM
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