Apparently, Professional Sports Is Not a Meritocracy

Sports Illustrated has released its list of the 50 highest paid American athletes. Not surprisingly, Tiger tops the list. Somewhat surprisingly, Phil Mickelson is second. LeBron, A-Rod, and Shaq round out the top 5.

But the list is peppered with mathletes—mostly basketball and baseball players—who nowhere near the top of the their respective sports. Stephon Marbury, who rode the bench for the Knicks before finishing the season as a bench player for the Celtics, is 17th. Steve Francis, who didn't play a single game last season (and it had nothing to do with injuries), is 22nd. Barry Zito, who went 10-17 last year with an ERA of 5.15, is 26th. All of these players rank higher than Tom Brady (26) and Albert Pujols (34), all-time greats in their respective sports. Dale Jr., despite winning only one race in the last two seasons, ranks 11th, 10 places better than any other driver. (Jeff Gordon is 21st.) Jimmie Johnson, who has won three consecutive Sprint Cup championships, is not on the list. Curiously, Tracy McGrady (15), who has yet to play a second-round playoff game, makes more than endorsements than Tim Duncan (16), who has four championship rings and two MVP trophies. The list includes several athletes who once were among the elite in their respective sports but whose skills dropped off after they scored a ginormous contract. (Francis, Zito, Jermaine O'Neal, and Jason Schmidt to name a few.)

22 of the top 50 play in the NBA; 14 play Major League Baseball. In all, only five sports are represented: NBA, MLB, NFL, PGA, and NASCAR. No hockey, soccer, or tennis players made the list. (It's only a matter of time before Jozy Altidore, who's making millions playing for Villareal in Spain and who will no doubt pick up several endorsements following his performance in the Confederations Cup, breaks through.) I was surprised no women made the top 50. I figured that either Serena Williams or Danica Patrick would have collected enough endorsement money to land in the 30s or 40s. Maria Sharapova is the 17th highest paid international athlete (Becks is number one). Were she an American, she would rank 21st.

Salt Water on Enceladus

Researchers have confirmed that the Cassini probe has collected salt water from icy geysers on Enceladus, a small moon in Saturn's E-Ring. From Time:

In 2005, Cassini . . . endeavored to determine the composition of the exhaust in the most straightforward way possible: by flying through it and registering the thousands of high-speed pellets that collided with its skin. The speed and density of the pellets confirmed that they were ice. Analyzing the precise composition of that ice has taken years, but the results, published this week in the journal Nature, were worth the wait.

Not only is the ice made of ordinary water, but it's salt water, with sodium turning up in the samples no matter how many times the ring material was retested. "Our measurements imply that besides table salt, the grains also contain carbonates like soda," says Frank Postberg, a Cassini scientist working at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.

Apparently, the chemistry of the ice points to a "large quantity of standing water" on Enceladus, water that "might be unusually hospitable to the emergence of life." (The article explains how liquid water can exist so far from the sun.)

While humanity has given up on the possibility of one day establishing diplomatic relations with little green men on Mars, we still can hope to one day encounter plankton-like organisms on the moons of Saturn.

It Has a Cover Now

You can see the cover of my new book, Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports, at Cokesbury.com.

Tell Them That It's Human Nature

I confess that I felt a sense of relief when I learned yesterday that Michael Jackson died. For anyone who was alive and listening to pop music during the 1970s and 1980s, watching Jackson self-destruct—and allegedly hurt several children and their families along the way—has been painful. I can only imagine how painful the past 15-or-so years have been for Jackson, his close friends and family, and the aforementioned children and their families. It's as though Michael Jackson had been terminally ill. While his suffering and death were tragic, now that the illness has passed, we are free to remember and celebrate Jackson as he was before he got sick. So do yourself a favor today and listen to "I Want You Back," "Blame It on the Boogie," "Say, Say, Say," "Billie Jean," "Human Nature," and/or Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." (Stay away from the Bad album; I listened to "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal" this morning, and they don't really hold up.) Embrace this opportunity to enjoy the contributions of one of the great performers in pop music history.

Odds and Ends

• SI's Ian Thomsen names the top NBA draft picks by slot. The Pacers' Danny Granger has a pretty good shot of being the best player ever drafted 17th.


• Scientists are developing "synthetic trees" that collect 1,000 more carbon that real trees. These aren't the sort of synthetic trees that one adorns with strands of lights and colored bulbs.


• This Buffy/Twilight mash-up is pretty fantastic.


• Putting his entire presidency on tape was probably a bad move on Richard Nixon's part (New York Times). Turns out he said that abortion was necessary in the case of interracial pregnancies.

Right Article, Wrong Occasion

I love the Sports Illustrated Vault. One of today's featured stories is this piece by Jackie MacMullan from June 1997 on that year's NBA Draft. Jackie Mac argued 12 years ago that, "The reality of the 1990s is that the draft is nearly irrelevant when it comes to building a franchise for the long term." She cites the case of the Orlando Magic who scored two top picks in the early nineties. Shaq and Penny took the Magic to the 1995 Finals before Shaq left for L.A. and persistent injuries hampered Penny's rise to superstardom. Likewise, MacMullan recalls the Charlotte Hornets, led by top early 1990s picks Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning. The Hornets seemed poised to be contenders for the next decade, but—as with the Magic—one star left and the other succumbed to injury. She also notes:

Consider the drafts of 1987 through '94. Only two of the eight No. 1 picks from those years remain with the clubs that drafted them (chart, page 54): San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson, a seven-time All-Star and the league's '95 MVP; and Milwaukee Bucks forward Glenn Robinson, a mildly disappointing performer whom the Bucks have considered trading. Also, of the first 10 selections from each of those drafts—a total of 80 players—only 17 have performed solely for the franchises that drafted them.

And the case of the ever-hapless Clippers:

From 1987 through '90, the Los Angeles Clippers' lottery picks were, respectively, a No. 4, forward Reggie Williams, who was a bomb; a No. 1, forward Danny Manning, who repeatedly asked for a trade and was finally granted one, to the Atlanta Hawks, in '94; a No. 2, forward Danny Ferry, who played a season in Italy rather than don a Clippers uniform and was eventually traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers; and a No. 8, Bo Kimble, who was a bust and played only 105 career games before falling out of the NBA.

All good points.

Here's the problem: The title of the article was, "Why Bother? Even if your team gets a stellar player like Tim Duncan in the NBA draft, it probably won't make any difference in the long run." Tim Duncan—whom the Spurs selected first in 1997—was the exception among 1990s top draft picks. Duncan has spent all 12 of his seasons with the Spurs (and won't be leaving any time soon); he's picked up two league MVPs and two Finals MVPs; and (with considerable contributions from the likes of David Robinson, Sean Elliot, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobli) has been largely responsible for the Spurs being title contenders for as long as he's been in the NBA (and winning four championships along the way).

Had this article been written about the 1998 NBA Draft, in which the Clippers took Michael Olowokandi with the first pick, the article would have been very appropriate. But as it were, Tim Duncan did make a lasting difference—a difference more lasting than any number one pick since Magic Johnson in 1979.

Only 13 Years Until Soylent Green

(FYI: It's people.)

Popped Culture has put together this fantastic futuristic movie timeline:

Pre-Order My Book, Kneeling in the End Zone

My book, Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports, which publishes in October, is now available for pre-order at Amazon. It's also up at Cokesbury, but I don't know whether you can pre-order it there. (I'll check on that.) There isn't much there at the moment; but as the pub date approaches, a cover image and more details will appear.

10 Years Ago . . .

. . . I was living in a moldy, ant-infested basement in Evansville, Indiana and working at the Auntie Anne's pretzel store in the Eastland Mall for $6.00 per hour. So the last decade has been good to me. I've come a long way.

Every now and then I like to evaluate what I was doing 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago. (I'm getting to the point now where I can remember things that happened 30 years ago as well.) 15 years ago, for example, I returned home from a church youth group trip to Cedar Point to learn that O.J. Simpson was a murder suspect and that my band (called Liquid Refreshment at the time) had secured its first gig: a show at the TA Skate Shop on Indianapolis' east side.

I had planned to say more, but I think I'll leave it at that.

Fun With Google Images

Yesterday at work I dropped by Google Images in search of a picture of "sunday school." As with all Google applications, Google Images predicts what one is searching for by listing the most popular searches that begin with whatever letters the searcher has entered. When one types a single letter, a list of the ten most popular images searches beginning with that letter appears. It's the sort of thing I've noticed for a long time but have never paid attention to.

When I typed s for "sunday school," I was surprised to learn that the most popular Google Images search beginning with s is "selena gomez." Given the millions of names, places, and objects that begin in s, I didn't expect the most popular to be the teenage star of Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place. I attribute this to 12-year-old girls who want to cover their bedroom walls with pictures of their favorite stars, 12-year-old boys looking for pictures of their latest celebrity crush, and creepy older men doing what creepy men do best.

"stars" is the second most popular search beginning with s; "spongebob" is fifth; "sexual intercourse" is sixth.

Naturally, I was eager to see what would come up when I entered other letters. Here's what I learned:

• The three most popular Google Images searches beginning with j are, in order, "jessica alba," "jesus," and "jonas brothers." I'm sure Jesus is excited to have topped the Jonas Brothers.


• The most popular search beginning with i is "images." I suppose that if one is searching for "images" in a database of images one won't be disappointed.


• "miley cyrus," another Disney Channel starlet, is the most popular m search in Google Images. But "demi lovato" is only the third most popular d search, behind "dogs" and "dragon."


• Not surprisingly, the most popular search beginning with z is "zac efron." Actually, four of the top ten z searches involve Zac Efron.


• "hitler" is the seventh most popular h search. Google Images has nearly 5 million Hitler pictures to choose from.


• The most popular q search is "question mark."

Thank You, Pittsburgh Penguins, for Saving Us From the Most Obvious Sports Year Ever

Nothing against the Detroit Red Wings, but if the Wings would have won Friday night, they would have won a second consecutive Stanley cup, their third this decade, and their fifth in the last fifteen years. Certainly there have been more impressive championship dynasties in recent years—even in the NHL—but the Red Wings, given their recent history would have been this season's most obvious Stanley Cup champion. And the first six months of 2009 have seen way too many obvious champions. Consider:

NFL Super Bowl champion: Pittsburgh Steelers—second title in four years; have won more Super Bowl than any other NFL team

Australian Open Women's Singles champion: Serena Williams—fourth Aussie Open title this decade

NCAA Men's Basketball champion: North Carolina—second title in five years; winningest team in college basketball history

NCAA Women's Basketball champion: Connecticut—fifth title this decade; ranked #1 for the entire 2008-09 season

Indianapolis 500 winner: Helio Castroneves—third win this decade

Premier League champion: Manchester United—third consecutive title; eleventh title since the creation of the Premier League in 1992

NBA champion: Los Angeles Lakers—fourth title this decade; ninth title in the past 30 years; fifteenth title overall

Slightly less obvious, but still worth mentioning: Florida won its second BCS college football title in three years; Boston U. won its fifth NCAA ice hockey title; Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal both won men's tennis Grand Slams (though it would have been more obvious if Federer had won the Australian and Nadal the French instead of the other way around). Surprisingly, Tiger has yet to win a Major, but that may change by the end of the week.

The Pittsburgh Penguins didn't come from nowhere. They advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals last year, and their roster includes two of the game's best players. Still, for much of the season, the Pens were no lock to make the Playoffs. They finished 17 points out of first place in the East but only 8 points out of tenth. And, as recently a few years ago, there were serious talks of the Penguins leaving Pittsburgh. Given what has happened in other sports this year, I'll take the Pittsburgh Penguins winning the Cup.

Stories That Need to Be Told

I posted this on Facebook a few days ago but neglected to post it here. From Slate:

They call them "enfants mauvais souvenirs," children of bad memories. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi women were systematically raped and forced into sexual servitude by members of extremist Hutu militia groups. Many of these women became pregnant. . . .

Photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik first became aware of the estimated 20,000 Rwandan children born of rape in 2006. . . . Over the next three years, Torgovnik returned repeatedly to Rwanda to interview and photograph [genocide survivors]. The result is Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape, a new book and traveling exhibition of 30 haunting portraits of Rwandan women and their children.

Read the whole thing.