Why You Suck — Quantified

September 08, 2009 at 09:40am by Scott

I can’t imagine what the editors of TBO.com were thinking when they posted this article and its companion web app today. It’s the official beginning of the regular season — there’s plenty of stuff to write about. And yet, they felt the need to remind you exactly how poor you are in this recession by asking you to compare your own salary to Antonio Bryant’s franchise tender of $9.88-million. And then they give you the tool that does the math for you. Welcome back from Labor Day.

For example, if your annual income is $45,000, Bryant earns your salary:
* Every .07 games
* Every .38 catches
* Every 5.68 yards
* Every .03 touchdowns

To earn Bryant’s 2009 salary would take you:
* 219.6 years
* 4.9 lifetimes

The purpose of this article is either a) To make you feel bad about yourself for making so little or b) To make you hate Bryant for making so much. Either way, not nice. Why single out Bryant? If they were going for shock value, there are plenty of athletes that make more money than Bryant. Is it because he the highest paid player on the Bucs this year? I don’t even know if he is, and the article doesn’t say. That seems like it would have been a handy piece of information for a newspaper to report. It really seems like this was put together by someone who wants to turn the public against Bryant. And this isn’t some throwaway piece that is buried below the fold. It’s the lead story on the TBO.com Bucs section this morning.

And what if you don’t get paid in actual money? I, for example, generally get compensated for my services with sandwich baggies of bathtub meth and poorly-coordinated handjobs. How am I supposed to plug that into their calculator?