Freakonomics

I understand athletes getting paid. They have very short careers and need to capitalize when they can but I find it a bit distressing that some teams have handed out huge free agent contracts to players just hours after hard working employees at those teams were laid off.

The worst example is Washington Redskins punk Dan Snyder. He lays off about 10% of his staff then turns around and inks Albert Haynesworth and DeAngelo Hall to what amounts to about 150 million dollars in contracts. Couldn't he have found about 2 million dollars to keep those staff instead of handing over the extra bucks to the 2 players. I'm sure that DeAngelo and Albert can live with a few less dollars in their pockets. Wouldn't it have been very cool if either DeAngelo or Albert, at their news conferences announcing the deals, said hey I'm going to give back a million dollars to the team so they can rehire those who had their jobs cut. Too bad it didn't happen. I'm guessing if either of those guys did that they would be heroes no matter what happened on the field in the fall!