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POINT AFTER
Funny Money
Pro contracts boggling your mind? This remedy to those big-bucks headaches fits the bill
by Leigh Montville
Posted: Tue October 7, 1997
The Department of the Treasury today announced the
creation of a new currency designed especially for
professional athletes. The money, called athlodollars, will
be put into service immediately in an effort to stem a
recent inflationary spiral caused by
the routine signing of jocks to nine-figure contracts.
"We had to do something," Secretary of the
Treasury
Robert E. Rubin said in a press conference. "The wages and
salaries in pro sports had gotten so surreal, so out of
whack—culminating with the $125 million payoff this week
to Kevin Garnett, that 21-year-old kid on the Minnesota
Timberwolves—that our monetary
system was in danger of
collapse."
The new currency, featuring a picture of Garnett on the
$1,000 bill, a picture of Albert Belle on the $5,000, Tiger
Woods on the $10,000, Michael Jordan on the $20,000 and Jim
McIlvaine on the $50,000, will be distributed to all pro
teams in America. It
will be the only money the teams will be allowed to pay the
players in and the only money the players will be allowed
to earn—unless they also find a real job for real money.
The athlodollar will be valued at 10% of standard U.S.
currency. This will mean that Garnett's six-year contract
will be worth
only $12.5 million in actual buying power. Rubin pointed out
that this still was a lot of money for "someone who
really hasn't won a damn thing yet."
"It all goes back to the values we place on
contributions to our society," President Clinton said
in a statement read at the White House. "Should a man
who can stick a tough, turn-around J in the middle of
traffic be rewarded so much more than a man who
spends a lifetime teaching our children or caring for our
elderly or our
sick?"
Reaction to the new currency by athletes and their agents
and union chiefs was uniformly negative. In Houston,
Rockets forward Charles Barkley had to be pulled off a
Treasury agent he had grabbed by the throat and was holding
off a balcony at
the Summit.
In Green Bay every member of the world
champion
Packers wore a black ribbon in practice to protest
what
quarterback Brett Favre called "the end to the
American Dream of getting all you can whenever you
can."
At various
baseball playoff sites, major leaguers pondered union head
Don Fehr's proposal to play only 10% of each postseason
game, after which they would sit down in the field and at
the plate. No immediate action was taken by the players.
Team and league officials in all sports, fearing reprisals
from their stars and superstars if they expressed their joy
at the move, issued a series of no comments. However, one
unidentified NBA owner, close to bankruptcy and pleading
for a new arena
with luxury boxes to help meet his payroll, added, "It
serves the money-grubbing bastards
right."
Treasury Department officials declined to comment on
reports that other currencies—entrodollars for
entertainers, corprodollars for high-ranking corporate
executives and journodollars for television-news
anchors—soon will be released. The officials did
stress that neither the athlodollar nor any of the other
possible changes would have any noticeable effect on
"the rest of
us." illustration by John S. Dykes
Issue date: October 13, 1997
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