DO OLYMPIC MEDALISTS AND SUPER BOWL CHAMPS WIN ANY BONUS MONEY?

Let me start with the National Football League.

First of all, a high school football player has one chance in 1250 to become a NFL player. But if you make it, the median salary is $860,000/year.
The top earners are quarterbacks, ranging from Patrick Mahomes ($45 million) to #11 Ryan Tannehill ($29.5 million).
Super Bowl QBs Matt Stafford is at #15 with $27 million and Joe Burrow around $9 million.
But it's not as simple as that, for Matt Ryan has a cap hit of $48,662,500, Josh Allen will get this year $46,961,405 in cash.

Mahomes has a 10-year contract worth $450,000,000.
Tom Brady has so far earned $320,232,980 in all his professional years.

Maybe it's safest being a kicker, as the average playing time with the league is seven years, the average kicker makes $1.8 million/year, and the league has penalties if an opposing player just touches one.
Also consider that players are free around half of the year.

All that information to tell you that each Super Bowl player:

Has already earned $150,000 extra in playoff bonuses leading to this game.
The winning team will get an additional $150,000 each, while the losing team will earn $75,000.

In short, if you are a star quarterback and win the Super Bowl, this playoff/SB bonus would be less than 1% of your annual salary. However, if your annual salary is at the median, this playoff/SB bonus would be around 25%.

About the Olympics, the value of winning money for a gold medal depends on whether you are a professional athlete or not. The National Hockey League is again sending zero players to this Beijing Winter Olympics, but keep in mind that the better players earn more than $10 million/year. The Summer Olympics always has professionals, and Lionel Messi last year earned $110 million, including endorsements.

And, by the way, are professionals allowed in the Olympics? At one time, no. Finally in 1986 the International Olympic Committee loosened up, allowing pros in certain sports. Early on only younger ones were allowed. Then any age. The 1992 Barcelona Summer Games featured for the first time NBA stars, and drew Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson on a Dream Team. In 1998 at the Nagano Winter Olympics, all NHL players were permitted.

So about winning gold medal in Beijing, it depends on the country. Here are some examples:

Italian curlers Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner won the Gold for mixed doubles. They each will get $205,000 from their national government.
Polish ski jumper Dawid Kubacki only got a bronze for the men's normal hill, but earned a bonus of $12,5000, and a monthly payment of $850/month when he turns 35.
Slovakian skier Petra Vlhova earned more than $57,000 for her gold in the slalom.
As of today, the USA had 11 medals, and paid off $607,500. Lindsey Jacobellis has won two golds and will get $75,000.
The case of the Liu brothers representing Hungary is interesting.

Shaolin Sandor Liu appeared to win the gold in the 1000 meter short track race for a bonus of $160,000. However, he was assessed penalties and got no medal and no money.
His brother Shaoang did get a bronze medal, for which he received $92,000 and a monthly stipend for life at the age of 35.

Brazil, Great Britain and Norway offer no bonuses. Surely, though, there will be commercial endorsements coming to gold medalists.

Today is the Super Bowl, but NBC should draw a large audience for the women's monobob, where two Americans are doing well. There will also be an ice dancing final.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

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HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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