Posted on September 6th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Everything in life is relative, and sports are no different.
New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez has signed two $200 million contracts during his career, earning $275 million from his present employer after getting $252 million from the Texas Rangers. Kobe Bryant has cashed Los Angeles Lakers paychecks worth $221 million thus far, with another $27.8 due next season. Ferrari once paid Finnish driver Kimi Räikkönen $153 million to race its cars for three years.
But a PGA Tour golfer reaching nine figures in career earnings was unprecedented … until Monday. It’s fitting that Tiger Woods is the first to pass the mark, because he’s the main reason prize money has risen so drastically since he debuted as a pro.
“It just means that I’ve come along at the right time,” Woods said Wednesday, on the eve of the BMW Championship. “We’ve had purse increases. Sam Snead won more tournaments than I did, and obviously he didn’t make the money that I did, just because it was a different era. I think, all that said, I’m not opposed to it.”
No one on the tour should mind, either, even though Woods’ presence tends to overshadow everyone else and whole tournaments at times. It took some getting used to, a black kid from Stanford who hadn’t won a pro event but who drew larger galleries and more face time on TV. He finished tied for 66th place in the 1996 Milwaukee Open and cashed his first PGA Tour paycheck, good for $2,544.
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Posted on September 4th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
There’s quite a drama playing out in Maryland’s athletic department, where it’s the best of times and worst of times in the Terrapins’ “Tale of Two Programs.”
Both have head coaches in their second season. Both coaches enjoyed success before relocating to College Park. Both men registered disappointing results in their initial campaign.
But Mark Turgeon has his men’s basketball team pointed in the opposite direction of Randy Edsall’s football team. The latest indication came Tuesday, when highly coveted Xavier transfer Dezmine Wells announced that he chose Maryland over Kentucky, among others.
(If Turgeon is beating John Calipari on players, it might not be long before on-court victories follow. Perhaps not as soon as Nov. 9, when the Terps and Wildcats play in the first college game at the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center. But soon enough.).
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Posted on September 4th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
With all due respect to President Obama, Mitt Romney is no Jeremy Lin.
Romney, scion of a heavyweight businessman and politician, enjoyed a life of power, privilege and prestige en route to becoming the GOP presidential nominee. Lin, the son of a computer engineer who emigrated from Taiwan, overcame rejection from major colleges and numerous NBA teams en route to becoming an international superstar.
But I understand where Obama was coming from in using a basketball analogy to compare his re-election effort with Romney’s campaign. According to a New York Times story on the president’s competitive nature, in February Obama was asked about the election and likened it to the raging “Linsanity” that enthralled the nation until cooling drastically after a trip to South Beach.
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By DERON SNYDER
