The ultimate student-athletes. Just awesome!

Sporting News has the 20 smartest athletes around.  One hell of an impressive list.  Makes sports and universities proud.
Scanning the list, I spotted this one:

Ryan Fitzpatrick, QB, Buffalo Bills
• Age: 27
• On-field accomplishments: 2004 Ivy League MVP, first Harvard quarterback to rush for more than 1,000 career yards. In 2005 with the Rams, became the fifth quarterback in NFL history to throw for 300-plus yards in his debut.
• Alma mater, major: Harvard, economics
• SAT score: 1580
• Off-field/intellectual interests: “I’m an Apple technology junkie.”
• If I weren’t a professional athlete, I’d ... “Probably (have) done the Wall Street thing for a few years and then maybe branched out a little bit. But finance is what I’d be involved in.”
• Nerdiest thing about me: “That’s probably a better question for my wife. But I love Scrabble. I’m playing Scrabble on my iPad constantly.”

Read more here: 

ht

Economic crisis, and stratospheric earnings

I am sure that it is only a matter of months before the governor of my state--Oregon--issues a pay-freeze. It has already been implemented in a few states, including California.
Meanwhile, there are a few continuing to earn gazillions of dollars and the public simply does not worry about it. In fact, they actively contribute their hard-earned dollars to enrich these few.

Don't believe me? Well, that is because you are not thinking about entertainers, like movie stars and basketball players. Don't you think it is atrocious that these people earn multiple of millions? But, hey, that is what the market system is all about. So, I find it strange that we completely ignore some of the multi-million earners in this market system, while we get insanely mad about some other multimillionaires. And it gets worse: these are not even "free market" transactions. MLB, for instance, is a Congress sanctioned monopoly! Players don't get free-agent status until they have served their time. .... ah, the twisted logic in life!
How much are the earnings? Here is an example about Lebron James:

At the age of 18, he was selected with the first overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft by the Cavaliers and signed a whopping $90m shoe deal with Nike before his NBA debut.
Since then his cachet has soared, with rich people's bible Forbes magazine putting his total earnings at $270m.

Want to know how much dead entertainers earn? Yes, they are no longer alive! Click here.

Why many rich athletes end up poor?

Yes, even the ones who earn quite a few million dollars over their career apparently end up being near-paupers. With most of the article focused on Evander Holyfield, this essay in TheRoot contends that the curse of being a world-class athlete, the maddening sense of invincibility and entitlement that simply seems to come with the territory. It's a formula that's proven as deadly as any opponent. One that can cut short careers as quickly as it depletes bank accounts.
Michael Vick and Mike Tyson both had it.So did Marion Jones and Latrell Sprewell. In fact, so do roughly two in every three NBA players, according to a recently published Toronto Star article that assures that some 60 percent of them are guaranteed to be destitute within five years of retiring.
With that, it becomes clear that the same indomitable spirit most athletes take to the field with themisthe same mindset they carry into their everyday existence.
But in the real world, such 'a-world-is-mine' mentality doesn't translate quite the same.