http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specia ... index.html

I find this story fairly facinating especially considering the upcoming ahem "labor strife" that awaits the NFL and NBA.

1 NFL player is in the top 10. The most marketable Peyton Manning and half of that is due to his endorsements.

The NFL is far and away the most popular sport in the US per television ratings and they are printing money... yet two golfers only one of which has won a major this year are atop this list.

Baseball and Basketball have plenty of entries one of which is 38 years old and past his prime by about 7 of those years.

Basketball may have a bit of an issue brought on mainly by owners making poor decisions.

The NFL is by far the best run league but the owners really have no leg to stand on when they cry about the labor deal. In comparison to other sports this current deal with the NFLPA is a good one and they should not have cancelled it. Everyone is happy except the owners who don't own thier own stadiums....

Owners in the NFL and NBA need to forget operating costs and realize growing thier teams assets and putting good teams on the field equate to where they actually make money on franchises....(selling them) Owning franchises is for the uber wealthy... not people counting pennies.

dont golfers get most of their $ from endorsements?

yes. yes they do.

That Darius Heyward Bey, Deangelo Hall and Albert Haynesworth are on this list...

This is why having an owner and a GM with a plan is paramount to your teams success.

Darius Heyward Bey is right next to Brett Farve... unbelievable.

i think the reason most football players fail in this area is the fact noone knows what the look like. they put on what, 15-20 lbs of pads and a helmut, you cant recognize them unless youre a die hard fan. peyton and brady do it because they have been successful and are visable out there, but most others, i dont think the average american can tell who they are from watching the sports shows.

with NBA, MLB and even soccer, tennis and golf, you can tell who people are whether they are playing or not

There are also far more football players you need to employ, which splits up the pot. Golfers are a one man show, so it means more money for them. If tennis were more popular I'm sure we'd see plenty of them on there, as well.

matt stafford? wtf?

If a rookie wage scale isn't in the new CBA everyone should go apeshit on the league.

matt stafford = glenn robinson

Football players do have a difficult time marketing themselves due to the helmet and all but I would think Tom Brady would have been higher on the list at least.

Golf makes sense in addition because it's a sport played by a wide demograpic or at least adopted for a short period of time and clubs are expensive so it makes sense to pay guys to endorse them. Tiger was gold for more than a decade. Phil has to have sold the hell out of a few watches as well. That said, why would I want to buy the same driver as either shankapotomous on top of this list? I want to hit it strait not 350 yards over to the other fairway?

The NBA is absolutely star driven. Good points folks.

Right, but they need to work in a provision that allows the player to re-up or re-negotiate after X number of years if he has performed on par with other veterans.

Also, in response to the original post about the NFLCBA, the decision to re-negotiate it isn't all about money. There are certain things that, philosophically, the players' union won't endorse (e.g., an 18-game schedule). The NFL executive on Mike & Mike this morning used three examples that will resonate with fans: (1) eliminating 2 pre-season games (what he didn't mention is that the league wants to make up those games in the regular season); (2) permitting a team to recoup a player's signing bonus on a pro rata scale if that player is arrested or found guilty of a crime; and (3) perhaps the most challenging, having more rigorous (read: blood) testing for HGH. Frankly, the fans probably don't care about No. 3; they will go along with No. 2; and they probably don't care about the pre-season games, but I would guess most don't want an 18-game schedule.

I think a good compromise is to do a 17 game schedule, and designate a permanent rival in the other conference. It'd be awesome to see games like Jets/Giants, Cowboys/Texans, Steelers/Eagles, etc., played annually.

2 more games would only serve the owners making more money while potentially hurting the players (exposing him to more chances of getting hurt)

in preason, your start players play what, at most a half (being generous) so the chances of them getting hurt arent that bad, but the preseason does serve a good purpose and that is to see how players are in real game situations. sure its not a real game, but you are going against real competition. yes your #5 WR isnt going against another teams #1 cb but you get a chance to see how the react to adversity.

i would say drop one pre and add one regular. definitely be allowed to recoup the bonuses and test for HGH, but make it a soft test like baseball used to use

The preseason is generally useless.

i agree as far as the starters go, but i would say its a good indicator of who you want as a back up as they arent going against their "pal" right across from them. by no means am i saying people take it easy against each other at team practices, but theres definitely a different mindset that occurs when going against someone not on your team

What interested me is that there were 5 Yankees on the list, but only two made any significant amount of money from endorsements.
A-Rod mad $4mil in endorsements
Jeter made $10mil in endorsements
Sabathia made only half a mil
Teixiera made only a quarter mil
Burnett made only 275,000
You have to imagine that at least Sabathia and Teixiera would be making more in endorsements if other, bigger, more-established Yankees weren't snatching them up. It would be interesting to see if, in the case of some of these big-name players, signing with the Yankees (or Red Sox or whoever) for a higher salary actually translates into less money due to less endorsement money.