| | Leonard Hamilton is going to be the new coach of the Washington Wizards, which
means at the very least that two months do not a seven-year contract make.
But you already knew that, didn't you? Just the way you know that
Jerry Rice's new five-year, $36 million contract with the San Francisco
49ers is not going to be for either five years or $36 million.
|  | | It will cost Leonard Hamilton $1 million to buy out his seven-year contract with Miami after two months. |
Now this is not to denigrate Hamilton, except to say "The Washington
Wizards? Great jumping horned toads, man, have you given your brain over
to the aliens?" Hey, if someone says you can make $2 million a year, and
you don't have to make cold calls or lift tractor motors in the Minnesota
winters, you're jumping too, Jack.
Rather, this is about the sanctity of numbers, and how in the old days
a six used to mean, well, six. A contract for a certain number of years
meant for a certain number of years, and an amount of money was an amount
of money, and not a different amount.
But leave it to the sports weasels to screw that up, too.
Hamilton's tale is easy to fathom. He signed a seven-year deal with
the University of Miami in April to make its basketball team continue to
not stink. That followed the earlier contract he signed and fulfilled to stop
the team from stinking.
Two months later, Michael Jordan hiked up his sweats, showed some
ankle and calf, and the next thing you know, Hamilton is exchanging the job
offer of a lifetime for the job offer of a lifetime.
Naturally, the people at Miami hate Leonard Hamilton today and may
mention it to him the next time the Wizards play the Heat. But that's an
ugly story for another time.
In fact, the Hamilton contract, and the Rice deal, which is actually
just a salary cap pretzel deal and not an actual tangible thing, reminds us
that when someone in sports tells you something, it is either a total lie,
a partial lie, or in the process of becoming either (a) or (b). And there
is only one solution.
Make the phrase "day to day" mean something again.
If the contracts they wave at us to show us their greatness and/or the
appreciation for their greatness cannot be trusted, it may be time for
these guys to become day laborers.
Oh, they can still make as much money as they can choke out of the
ungrateful oil slicks for whom they work. We don't want to stifle free
enterprise, or whatever it is that owners and athletic directors actually
practice with their employees.
But it is in the interests of the nation that they be paid in cash, at
the end of each working day. Sure it means sending an employee out to the
bank every day to bring back a couple of million in small bills to cover
the roster, but they do more menial tasks now, and for far less thanks.
If Jerry Rice has a five-year, $36 million contract, for example, he
should be paid at the end of the day -- $19,715.22. And we mean every day,
Christmas, Thanksgiving, Pokey Reese's birthday, whatever.
And I defy you to show me someone who cannot eke out a living on
$19,715.22 a day. Sure, you might have to save up for a week to get that
new car you've been eyeing, but that's what warehouses shaped like piggy
banks are for.
The advantage here is so obvious, we are ashamed to have to point it
out to you. We will no longer be told that a five-year deal means five
years when it could just as easily mean until Bastille Day. It means the
employee will have to put in that full day's work to get his dough, and it
also means that if owner Arthur B. Inherited Wealth isn't supportive enough
between opening whistle and closing time, the employee could direct him to
the middle finger of his free hand and cut a better deal elsewhere.
Ahh, but what of stability? What of fan identification? What of
loyalty? What of the virtues that make sport what it is?
Well, to that we can only say, "Shut your yap, you blithering
pudding." Stability is when you can find a place to put your horse. Fans
can't identify where they left their last beer. Loyalty is the distance
between you and the person who has your dinner. Virtue is something Bill
Bennett thought up so he wouldn't have to write books about the social
benefits of cannibalism.
Compared to the warm, gooey feeling that comes from knowing that
you'll never have to hear about another nine-year contract to keep Coach
First Round And Out from taking that job with the Columbus Blue Jackets,
the uncertainties of day labor are allowable losses.
Well, they are to us, anyway, and who counts more than us? Other than
Leonard Hamilton, I mean?
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | |
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