When Cloris Leachman has better assets than the financial markets, we know we’ve hit rock bottom.
However, Wall Street isn’t the only road paved with cruddy investments. Our sports world is laden with pecuniary dreck. Whereas the government is seemingly willing to fork over a quadrillion big ones to bail out Edmund Winston Chestershire III and friends, it won’t even pay the little attention it requires to realize that Barry Zito’s left arm is on the verge of being worth less than two pesos in London. The $126 million the Giants spent on it may very well be the worst athletic investment of our time. Sure, AIG needed bailing out. But the Giants don’t?
Here’s a load of other depreciating crap clogging up the monetary arteries of athletics—crap that Hank Paulson needs to gobble up while there’s still time.
Kansas City sports
There’s not a sports town in America for which I feel worse. Since moving to the AL Central in ’94, the Royals have gone a grand total of 944-1255. That’s a winning percentage of .432. That’s anemic. Does Mike Sweeney even play for them anymore? Can they even convince ten men to play most nights? If I played for them, I’d probably just use my salary for beer money and get canned watching the World Series of Poker in the clubhouse. It’s the closest anything in the franchise would come to sniffing “World Series”.
This is without mentioning the Chiefs.
Tyler Thigpen. There.
Estimated value: Maybe, like, a 100-something… dollars… or cents.
All of David Beckham's Galaxy jerseysThere hasn’t been a less-deserving #23 since Bryant Stith. It’s not that I don’t like Becks—really, I love his wife too much—but the man just hasn’t accomplished the job. The Galaxy are substantially under .500 since his arrival, perhaps because he’s injured all the time and perhaps because the team is too awful for him to compensate. He was supposed to raise awareness of soccer in this country; do you watch more MLS now than you did a couple of years ago? That’s what I thought. I’m too busy watching Liverpool and singing Rodgers and Hammerstein, anyway. And seriously, who on GGE wants to wear a polyester shirt with “Herbalife” draped across the chest in public, anyway? At least Steven Gerrard gets to trot around in a sweet blood-red kit with a beer sponsor all over it. I’m down for that.
Estimated value: Let’s say $10 million. But the government should give them all to Goodwill in an act of, well, you know.
The St. Petersburg Bowl
“Huh?” you ask. Yeah, me too. According to the internets, it is one of two new bowls (the other being the EagleBank Bowl) added to the slate for ’08. Wanna know how worthless this thing is? For one, it’s going to be played in Tropicana Field. On the right field line. Because the stadium was designed for baseball only. I’m looking forward to someone overthrowing a touchdown pass that clanks off the foul pole. I bet an overhead shot from the roof will look like a Picasso painting if he was into football. The participants are supposed to be the most average team the Big East can find and some Conference USA doormat. A Sun Belt team will be the stand-in if one conference isn’t able to field enough bowl-eligible teams. This game could feasibly pit Troy against Pittsburgh on a field whose end zones are marked by home plate and an outfield wall.
There is an oversupply of awful bowl games on the market.
Estimated value: the remainder of Dave Wannstedt’s contract.
The Raiders’ head coaching position
If there was ever an athletic post that desperately needs to be nationalized, it’s this one. It’s a metaphorical revolving door, only if that revolving door rotated at 500,000 rpm, threw the outgoing personnel through a window across the street, and invited some of the bloodied victims to come back for another whirl. I badly want to see this become a government-run operation before Bush is out of office.
Aide 1: “Who should we appoint, sir?”
President: “Bobby Valentine.”
Aide 2: “Sir, he was a Ranger.”
President: “Great, then. Get Chuck Norris to be the defensive coordinate (wheezing laugh).”
Aide 1: “Sir, that’s ‘coordinator,’ not coordinate.”
President: “You say you want to play some Battleship?”
I would forgo my graduate education and move to Oakland if this happened.
Estimated value: Let’s see, they pay the President $400 K a year, right? So… yeah, $3.2 million per. That sounds good.
Tom Brady in all fantasy leagues
I seriously think owners should be reimbursed for this. The guy who had him in my buddies league sent a group e-mail the night he was injured with the subject line “[expletive that begins with the letter f, all caps]” and body “[same expletive, lower-case]” about 27 times. No punctuation. He sent it at a little past 1 in the morning, so I’m guessing he had about half of his hair, a ripped shirt, a 5 o’clock shadow from hell, and was shouting like Doc Brown would if Marty ever plowed the DeLorean through a Taco Bell drunk while they were both stuck in the year 2031. I have Moss and that’s been enough anguish.
Estimated value: Enough money to purchase compensatory first rounders for all Brady owners in ’09.
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