It’s Good Work If You Can Get It
Tomorrow Peyton Manning will take the field for the Denver Broncos in SuperBowl 50, what may prove to be his final professional game.
Millions, maybe billions, of people will watch his every movement. Mesmerized by every minute of exciting football action… All 6 of them.
From snap to whistle, Manning will put in about 6 solid minutes of game time work tomorrow, tops.
Over his 18 year, hall of fame career, 226 regular season games and 26 playoff games, he’s clocked a grand total of 29 hours. Over that same 18 year span he’s been paid about a quarter of billion dollars to play football. It works out to tad over $8 million an hour. It’s good work if you can get it.
The fact it there will only be 12 minutes where something actually happens tomorrow and The Denver offense will be on the field for about half of it. That’s all there is any football game. Read More at The Good Men Project.
There will be TV coverage of the TV coverage for tomorrow’s game. Dawn til dusk and then some. Highlight reels of the highlight reels. And millions, maybe billions of people will sit glued to their screens for the privilege of watching. Thousands spent small fortunes to actually be at the game and thousands more spent slightly smaller wads of money on new 60 inch big screens so they can watch all 12 minutes in living color, full size, so close they can almost smell the sweat.
But it’s all an illusion.
Peyton Manning is one of the hardest working players to ever play in the NFL. He made watching tape cool. And he works the practice squad so hard he bought one the kids a new custom fitted suit for the big game.
He’s earned every penny he’s ever been paid. Because Peyton Manning doesn’t get paid to play football. He doesn’t get paid to throw touchdowns. And he doesn’t get paid to win the big game.
Peyton Manning gets paid to make you watch.
