Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Those Damn Yankees

Well, the Yankees have done it again. I mentioned last week after the signing of CC Sabathia that the Yankees are what is wrong with baseball. I realize that they are not doing anything against the rules, however this off season is the perfect example of the need of a salary cap in Major League Baseball.

With the signing of Mark Teixeira for $180M over the next 8 years the Yankees have now spent just under $430M in the past month. Let's look at that number again, $430,000,000.00.

So, that got me wondering and I hit the research lab. Here are some tidbits that I came up with:

* With $430M dollars the Yankees could purchase nearly one quarter of General Motors, and help the entire US economy by doing so.

* The Yankees now have the rights to the four highest paid players in baseball, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia. They owe those players $805M dollars throughout the life of their contracts.

* The Yankees just received a $26.9M bill from commissioner Bud Selig for the luxury tax the Yankees owe from the 2008 season. That is more than the entire Florida Marlins team salary last season.

And the tough one for any Pirates fan to read...

* Through the Pirates current streak of 16 consecutive losing season the team has spent a TOTAL of $478.2M in salary over those 16 seasons. The Yankees spent nearly that much in the past few weeks.

THE TROUBLE TRACKER

It was a big week for The Tracker. This week we add a coach for the first time in Tracker history.

The Coach:
The head coach of the Ole Miss basketball team, Andy Kennedy, had a very rough trip to Cincinnati this past week. While he accompanied his team he assaulted a cabbie in the Queen City. He is accused of punching the cabbie and calling him “bin laden”. To make matters worse he then coached his Rebels to a 77-68 defeat against Louisville in the Big East / SEC Challenge.

The Football players:
Michigan State joins Michigan in beating up its own schools hockey players this season. Two Spartan freshman, Glenn Winston and Mitchell White, face misdemeanor charges for assault after hospitalizing a Spartan hockey player after an altercation at a house party in East Lansing.

SEASON STANDINGS:
The "U" - 7
Florida State Criminoles - 5
The State Penn - 5
Indiana - 4
WVU - 3
the Ohio State University - 2
Tennessee - 2
MeCheatAgain - 2
Florida - 2
Michigan State - 2
Mississippi State - 1
Nebraska - 1
Texas Tech - 1
UCONN – 1
Kansas – 1
Syracuse - 1
Ole Miss - 1

CONFERENCE STANDINGS:
Big Ten - 5 schools (45% of schools in conference)
SEC - 4 (33%)
Big XII - 3 (25%)
Big East - 3 (19%)
ACC - 2 (16%)