Tag: money

Categories
College Football

Bob Stoops set to earn $6 million, despite being Mr. Unclutch


Bob Stoops is in hog heaven right now. At the end of this year, Stoops will complete his 10th season of service for the Oklahoma Sooners which means he’s about to get paid – big time! Stoops is going to collect a one-time bonus of $3 million on New Year’s Eve for the decade of work, which combined with his $2.77 million salary for the year means Stoops will bring home close to $6 million this year (including performance bonuses). Good investment? Athletic director Joe Castiglione sure seems to think so.

People may question why we do certain things,” Castiglione said. “But we can measure his impact, not just with success on the field, but the way our team generates interest and excitement because of the leadership of the head coach. He positively affects so many elements of the athletic program, campus community and the state — you could talk about it from the infusion of excitement to the economic impact.”

“Bob Stoops is worth every penny and always has been and always will be.

We see where Castiglione is going with this and it makes complete sense. There’s no doubt that the guy generates tons of revenue for the university, but we’re football fans, all we care about is wins and losses, so we have a slightly different view on the coach. Stoops is an excellent coach, there is no questioning that, but let’s take a quick look at his track record. Sure, he only has 17 losses compared to 90 wins, but it’s not the number of losses but rather who the losses are to.

His first season at OU, he went 7-5. We’ll let that one completely slide by. In 2000, he won the National Championship, so bravo coach. Then in 2001, things start getting interesting.

2001 – #4 Sooners lose to unranked Oklahoma State at home in season finale
2002 – #1 Sooners lose to unranked Texas A&M on the road then #3 Sooners lose to Oklahoma State on the road
2003 – #1 Sooners lose to #13 Kansas State in Big 12 Championship, followed by #3 Sooners loss to #2 LSU in National Championship
2004 – #2 Sooners lose big, 55-19, to #1 USC in National Championship
2005 – #7 Sooners lose season opener to unranked TCU in Norman, #21 Sooners lose to unranked UCLA, unranked Sooners lose to rival Texas and then go on to lose to Texas Tech
2006 – #15 Sooners lose to #18 Oregon, #14 Sooners lose second straight to Texas, #7 Sooners get shocked by #9 Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl
2007 – #3 Sooners lose to unranked Colorado, #3 Sooners lose to unranked Texas Tech and #3 Sooners close the season by losing to West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl

All we’re saying is if someone is going to get a huge bonus, they can not lose even half the games listed above. Still, from a big-picture perspective, it was probably a smart investment by Oklahoma.

And let’s not forget the big man’s perks.

In addition, Stoops is also provided with
*2 automobiles with insurance

*35 hours annually of private airplane use

*Membership and monthly dues at a Norman-area golf course

*20 football tickets

As a side note, if you’re in the mood to make yourself feel like total crap today then just check out the Bob Stoops salary calculator.

Links:

[NewsOK.com]: Bob Stoops is the six million-dollar man…after bonuses, that is

Categories
NBA General

Latrell Sprewell would like to know if you have any spare change


Remember when Latrell Sprewell turned down a big, fat $21 million contract with the T-Wolves because is wasn’t enough moolah to feed his family? Well, a couple years later, it looks Sprewell might be forced into a part time gig as a grocery sacker.

The former coach-choker is apparently up against some hard times and is looking to make a little extra cash, but Spree isn’t like us, he doesn’t have to go to the blood bank or haul his guitars and X-Box to some shady pawn shop. Of course, Sprewell owes a lot more than he could ever get from the corner Quickie Pawn.

Former Knick star Latrell Sprewell’s home is up for foreclosure and his yacht sold at auction to help pay off the $1.3 million he owes on the boat, according to court filings. …

RBS Citizens NA, or Citizens Bank, filed a foreclosure suit last week in Milwaukee County for the $405,000 home Sprewell bought in the Milwaukee suburb of River Hills in 1994.

In court documents, the bank said Sprewell owed $295,138 in outstanding payments plus interest.

Sprewell failed to make his mortgage payments of $2,593 per month from September 2007 to January 2008, the documents said.

Last month, Sprewell’s 70-foot yacht, named “Milwaukee’s Best,” was sold at auction for $856,000 to a man from Milwaukee. It was originally worth about $1.5 million. The bank holding that mortgage, New York-based North Fork Bank, asked that it be seized to pay off $1.3 million in debt.

Sounds like someone has been attending the Scottie Pippen Institute for Poor Investments.

Links:

[NYPost.com]: Sprewell forced to sell yacht

Categories
NBA General

Charles Barkley is burning… his savings

Before the Super Bowl, the population of New York were the only people on the planet to even give the Giants a fighting chance against the undefeated Patriots. Of course, after the shocking upset, everyone suddenly became a Monday morning quarterback, claiming they knew all along Eli would march to victory. Well, Charles Barkley is no different from the rest of us, but he chooses to blame ESPN for his horribly expensive bet gone bad.

Good thing this weekend’s All-Star game isn’t in Las Vegas this year, the Chuckster might go bankrupt at this rate.

Links:

[The700Level.com]: Charles Barkley drops “about $400,000” on the Super Bowl

Categories
NFL General

The Pats are bummed, but Nevada sports books: You are the biggest losers!


Besides Eli Manning going down in history as a Super Bowl MVP – we’re still shaking our heads in disbelief – a whole lot of other people found themselves in unexpected position following Sunday’s shocker. Mainly bookies that lost a ton o’ greenbacks when the Patriots didn’t pull through with perfection.

Nevada sports books lost a record $2.6 million on Super Bowl bets when the Giants defeated the Patriots 17-14.

Nevada Gaming Control Board analyst Frank Streshley said large amounts were bet on the money line that the Giants would win outright. Payouts on those bets were as much as 4-to-1 because the Patriots were such heavy favorites.

Sports books handled just over $92 million on the game. That was the third-highest amount ever, but down for the second straight year.

Of course, the easiest money made all weekend was our little wager that New Yorkers couldn’t celebrate without committing random acts of vandalism. Yup, somebody’s finally getting Rock Band!

Dozens of young New York Giants fans jumped on the hoods, trunks and tops of cars and buses along the parade route through lower Manhattan yesterday, partly marring an otherwise joyous event designed to celebrate the football team’s Super Bowl victory.

At least four different incidents were caught on videotape around the intersection of Reade Street and Broadway.

During one of them, youngsters ganged up on a yellow taxi and smashed its windshield with their elbows despite a woman’s efforts to pull them off the car.

Links:

[KTVU.com]: Super Bowl Upset Costs Bookies
[NewsDay.com]: Arrests for vandalism made during Giants parade

Categories
NFL General

Super Bowl tickets are expensive; don’t forget you’re gonna have to watch Eli too


We know that the chance to see a perfect 19-0 season doesn’t come around very often, but this is starting to get just a little out of hand. Don’t you people have kids you want to send to college?

Asking prices for the Feb. 3 game range from $2,450 to $19,446 at StubHub, a unit of eBay Inc. and the biggest of the online resellers. Officials there say the average price so far is $4,300 for tickets that the National Football League originally priced at either $700 or $900.

“You gotta mortgage your home to get into the game,” said Michael Hershfield, a former lawyer who recently started the ticketing Web site LiveStub.com. “There’s this recipe that’s been spiced up for a very exciting, very hot event. With all the changes in the industry, this combination has created this current wave of supply and demand.”

RazorGator Chief Executive Jeff Lapin, who is predicting total sales will set a record, is amazed what buyers are willing to pay. Tickets on his Web site are listed between $2,700 and $7,200. “I’m telling my friends to buy now because it looks like it’s going to be tight,” he said.

StubHub figures show the march higher of scalped tickets in recent years. Tickets it handled for last year’s game between the Bears and the Colts averaged $4,004. That was sharply higher than the Steelers-Seahawks in 2006 at $3,009, the Eagles-Patriots in 2005 at $2,659, the Patriots-Panthers in 2004 at $2,290, and the Raiders-Buccaneers in 2003 at $2,767.

Considering the University of Phoenix Stadium will seat around 75,000 on game day, we’re talking about a whole lotta the greenbacks. Even with an expensive divorce settlement ahead, we know Shaq Daddy can foot the bill, but what about us regular Joe Six Packs? We’re going to have to sell our organs to get through the gates? Aww, screw it; if we’re dropping a load of cash, it’s going to be at the Lingerie Bowl and it’s going to be all in one dollar bills!

Links:

[CBS2.com]: Super Bowl LXII Tix Fetch Record Prices

Categories
Miami Heat

When you’re Shaq, all mo’ money means is mo’ bills


Patrick Ewing once infamously said “We might make a lot of money, but we also spend a lot of money.” Perhaps nobody exemplifies this better than Mr. Money Bags, Shaquille O’Neal.

The big fella is currently going through a divorce from his wife, Shaunie, and had to turn over a statement of his finances to the courts and the Palm Beach Post managed to get their hands on it. After taking a look at the article, it’s pretty clear everything Ewing said was true. Shaq indeed makes a lot of money ($1.8 million per month), but he spends a lot of money too ($875,015 per month). Here’s how Shaq attacks the bills.

* $156,116 in mortgages on three homes (including his $20 million mansion on Miami Beach’s Star Island), plus $31,299 in homeowners insurance
* $110,505 for vacations
* $26,500 a month for child care
* $24,300 for gas
* $17,220 for clothing
* $12,775 for food
* $10,065 for electricity
* $10,000 for temporary child support
* $10,000 for alimony
* $6,730 for dry cleaning
* $5,000 for car payments
* $3,345 for phone bills
* $2,305 for pets
* $1,610 for lawn and pool maintenance
* $1,495 for cable TV

Talk about depressing! He’s dropping almost seven grand a month on dry cleaning and we can’t even scrounge up enough change to get our water turned back on. Yea, do *not* go in there! Pheeww!

Links:

[PalmBeachPost.com]: Shaq as big a spender as he is a man

Categories
MLB General

After all these years, the Famous Chicken is still finger-lickin’ good


Minor league baseball is always trying to pack the stands with some sort of gimmick or promotion. It seems like the ideas just keep getting wackier and wackier with every passing season. Of course, if all the front office knuckleheads would just stick to the basics then attendance wouldn’t be a problem. You don’t need to give away bobble heads of players or put together expensive postgame firework shows. Nope, just sign up the Famous Chicken to make an appearance and watch the dolla, dolla bills come rolling in.

Its appearance at minor league games, on average, increased attendance by 26 percent.

That’s pretty good when you consider, as the firm [Plan B Branding] reveals, that the Chicken’s appearance only cost teams 22 cents per fan. It’s also pretty good when you consider that the Chicken is more than 30 years old.

My favorite business story with the Chicken involves the day long ago that the man inside the costume, Ted Giannoulas, negotiated an attendance deal with the Padres. The rule worked that he’d get a piece of every ticket above a certain number of expected fans for the night.

The Chicken brought some 30,000 more fans to the game and Giannoulas came home with a $40,000 payday. As the story goes, he spent all that money defending himself in a lawsuit against KGB radio, the station that in March 1974, first put him in a chicken suit as part of a promotional gimmick.

And if you can’t get the Famous Chicken to pay your park a visit then we’d like to suggest this lady as option number two.

Links:

[CNBC.com]: The Ex-San Diego Padre Chicken Still Rules!!

Categories
All Other Sports

Russian tennis princess gets robbed at gunpoint


If you thought that the curse of money ended with the NFL and the NBA then you’d be wrong. In fact, if you thought greedy, violent criminals and their get-rich-quick schemes were secluded to the United States then you’d be wrong. Turns out those wacky Russians are some aggressive, money-hungry scandals as well.

Tennis star Anna Chakvetadze was tied up by a group of masked men at gunpoint at her home in Russia on Tuesday, robbing her of about $106,000 in cash and around $200,000 in jewelry and other things around her home, according to her father.

Six assailants approached the home outside Moscow before dawn, tied up a maid in another building and forced her to hand over a remote control enabling them to enter the house through the garage, Dzhamal Chakvetadze told NTV television.

“They started to beat me, and I resisted. They hit me over the head with, I think, a pistol butt. It was dark,” he said, taking off his cap to show his bruised scalp. “They took out a pistol and told me my child was at home – reminded me – and they told me to hand everything over. I did.”

Police and Russia tennis coach Shamil Tarpishchev said the assailants tied up Chakvetadze and her parents, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Tarpishchev said the 20-year-old player, ranked No. 6, “tried to resist but it was useless,” ITAR-Tass reported.

Maybe we’re just poor sports bloggers who can’t conceive this type of stuff, but $106,000 in cash?!?! Don’t you need a special in-house safe like Scrooge McDuck had in his mansion if you’re holding that kind of paper? Unless you’re Tony Montana, then we say use a freakin’ bank.

Oh, and it’s probably not advised to advertise your wealth on your website. We understand that everyone already knows you’re loaded, but, c’mon, you’re just asking for trouble.

I’m sort of embarrassed to admit but I’m into jewelry too, Hehe…One of my weaknesses are sport cars. Ferrari in particular.

Links:

[WCBSTV.com]: Russian Tennis Star Tied Up, Robbed At Her Home

Categories
Indiana Pacers

Jamaal Tinsley was in the wrong place at defiantly the wrong time


Jamaal Tinsley and his crew were shot at early Sunday morning near a downtown Indianapolis hotel after some apparently jealous thugs took issue with the group at a club. The incident went down around 3:40 a.m. when the unknown assailants opened fire with an assault rifle at the three vehicles Tinsley’s friends were in. The group detoured to the hotel once they realized they were being followed. The Pacers equipment manager, sitting in the back seat of Tinsley’s car, was shot in both elbows.

Jamaal’s brother, James Tinsley, opened fire on a gray Chrysler and a dark pickup as two of the cars chased the shooters approximately two blocks away. Jamaal was not involved in the subsequent chase.

And of course, this whole thing is really based on something completely senseless. According to the Indy Star:

A group was giving members of Tinsley’s crew a hard time about the expensive cars they were driving – a Mercedes, Rolls Royce and Dodge Charger – and the amount of money they made.

So you’re telling us that these morons basically approached Tinsley’s crew and said “You guys are rich and have really nice cars. You’re a bunch of losers!” Whatever happened to just being jealous from afar?

Needless to say, even though Pacers coach Jim O’Brien was happy to hear his player wasn’t hurt and gave him the day off because he “wanted him to get away from basketball for the day,” O’Brien wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Tinsley’s situation.

We leave it up to individuals to be responsible. Was I happy that somebody was out at 3 o’clock in the morning? No, I wasn’t. But that’s a decision that was made, and it was the wrong decision to make.

“It wasn’t on a game night. We had off yesterday and we were practicing at 11 o’clock today.

“I would think as we all suspect, nothing good happens after 1 o’clock if you’re around alcohol or around an environment where there could be weapons. Nothing good can happen in that situation.

But the Heat’s Alonzo Mourning went a step further, blaming the flashy NBA lifestyle for bringing the player haters out.

You’ve got to understand that we all are vulnerable when it comes to putting ourselves in situations where the public has access to us. And if we go out and flaunt and expose our luxuries, there are some jealous people out there who want it and put us in a position where we’re targets,” Mourning said. “I’m not saying you’ve got to hide it, but don’t be flamboyant. Don’t walk into a club with a crowd of people wearing a $250,000 chain around your neck or pull out a wad of hundreds for everybody to see. Pull out a credit card instead. I mean, you’re asking for attention and you’re asking for trouble.

Just think of how much trouble Pacman Jones could have avoided if he had whipped out his Visa card instead of making it rain the old fashioned way.

Links:

[IndyStar.com]: Shots fired at Pacers’ Jamaal Tinsley
[USAToday.com]: Heat curb Clippers, make Riley third NBA coach with 1,200 wins

Categories
Atlanta Falcons

54 pit bulls win the lottery

Now it is starting to become clear why Michael Vick simply strangled, beat, shot or electrocuted pit bulls that were no longer of service…those mutts have some serious upkeep!

Vick was basically ordered to fork over almost $1 million for the care of the 54 dogs that were seized from his Virginia home several months back. The exact amount Vick set aside for the pooches was a cool $928,073. In case you’re wondering, that’s $17,186.54 per pit bull!

We know that vet bills can be expensive, but damn! Throw in some Kibbles-n-Bits, a few chew toys and we’re talking a couple hundred bucks a year, right? Oh, of course, poker money.

Links:

[NBC11.com]: Vick Will Pay $1M For Care Of Seized Dogs