So it is as expected. Sports stars don't do it for greatness and success first, they do it for greed. Notably, this happens in team sports where great players can club together and say they want to play with other great players, and so end up multi-millionaires before they've even stepped onto the pitch. And so it conveniently happens that with greed comes success. Not the other way around. Pay them a World average wage and see which clubs end up successful, and who plays with whom. I think Jimmy Hill was wrong, though I very much doubt he imagined this.
Why? They have salary caps and a load of players, some of them being paid very very little compared to top players. Pretty much every NFL team will be paying the same average (as they have the same cap and the same amount of players) which would be an average (and maximum) of about $2.45m per player - some way off being on this list, with #20 being at $4.49m.
Saints rank at 155th in the world for annual playing staff wage bill. Annual Wage Bill - £1,246,404 Average Weekly Wage - £23,969 You download the data for all of the 294 teams by visiting the following link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...DMSdd11fvWsKa79pnxQG4pWhI/edit#gid=1239972605
Jimmy Hill lived in a different world when he managed to get the maximum wage of £100 per week overturned. For a start, he couldn't have imagined having several live league football matches on TV every single week, or that people would be prepared to pay huge subscriptions to watch them. I would say that the inflated wages of footballers nowadays were an effect of the TV money first and foremost, as are those of the MLB and the NBA players on that list. You can also add in F1 drivers and tennis players as well, not to mention golfers.
Must be a few at Saints on more than that, but the average is dragged down by the rest. You can bet that the youngsters are on comparatively low wages...though that may change with other teams sniffing around. I suppose Rickie and Adam must be our highest earners.
Looking at the figures a bit more closely, I suppose this is another reason to want Liverpool to win the Premier League this season. Out of the top 4 clubs, they are currently paying the lowest wages. Man United are second to Man City, some way ahead of Chelsea and the rest. (Suppresses a snigger).
Same thing with baseball...you have a bunch of guys making $500,000, because pre-arbitration contracts are essentially limited to that (you can be the best in the game and still make $500k in your first, second and third year, because teams can automatically renew at that figure and aren't exactly going to pay you more) driving down the per-player average despite wage inflation to the extent where an average free agent starting pitcher/positional regular has a per-annum value of around $10m.
