A couple of days ago I underwent my first ever fantasy football draft. Call it beginner's luck, but I got first pick, so I chose Chris Johnson from the Tennessee Titans. Johnson, coincidentally, just signed a four year contract with Tennessee for 53.4 million dollars. Mind you, I haven't followed sports in a while, and yet I am aware that athletes make heaps of coin, though I've never given it more than a cursory thought; yet now that he is on MY team, I considered a little deeper this magnificent paycheck that this man makes to run a pigskin through a forest of deadly giants every fall and part of each winter. I especially, and perhaps ill-advisedly, considered this great sum in relation to my own (not complaining!) "living" wage. And what some scratch math soon showed was that I would need to work at my current salary for 1,000 years to make what Johnson is making in four. Each year for the next four years, Johnson will make what I make in 250 years (minus the expenses). Before I let that slightly depressing figure sink in I'll just hope that he kicks ass and helps me win the $200 pot that is up for grabs. That will, atleast, put me closer to his salary.
Watching football hasn't exactly been of central importance in my life since I was a kid, and I'm plenty busy nowadays with work, school, and outdoor pursuits that I don't really need much to fill my time. But I'm hoping to fit it in, make it somewhat of a priority this year. Maybe I can become better versed in stats and who's doing what this year in the NFLto have the sort of cultural capital that comes in handy when no one wants to discuss, oh, Paradise Lost or talk about late nineties Widespread Panic shows (not a big topic among expats in Korea, strangely). And I can simultaneously tap into my heritage of cracking a beer and yelling at my television for a couple of hours on Monday night.
