I’m not really a basketball fan, but when I found out the Portland Trailblazers would have the first pick in the 2007 NBA draft, I was excited.  Here’s a team I loved as a kid, resented as a teenager, and just didn’t care about as an adult … now in the national spotlight.  Everyone was following closely who the team would pick, and they finally settled on Greg Oden.  Season tickets sold out before anyone realized it, and everyone was trilled for the new season with, allegedly, the best player in the game.

Then it was announced he wouldn’t be playing.  He had to have knee surgery and would be out for the entire season.  Portland groaned, complained, but ultimately decided to stand behind their star rookie player.  Season tickets were returned, and people watched Oden on TV commercials talking about how he’d come back even stronger to start the next year.

Well, we’re here.  A new season, a new year.  Greg Oden starting, once again everyone excited to watch him play.

Then he injures his ankle in the first quarter of the season opener against the Lakers.  Not all is lost, he’ll still eventually play for us … in the second half of the season.  Once again we wait.

I had a boss once who absolutely hated professional sports.  He said the idea of paying money to watch multi-millionaires play a game anyone could play on their own was ridiculous.  At the time, I just shook my head and went to the games anyway … but I wonder if he’s right.  We award athletes with a certain level of celebrity … and with that comes money, acclaim, and (apparently) an above average allowance when it comes to job performance.

If any of us “normal” people suffered an injury preventing us from going to work for over a year, we’d be out of a job.  I realize that he had to recover before he actually started playing again, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  Imagine you work in an office and suffer a major paper cut injury.  You clean the wound, but it still hurts to type as the motion continuously re-opens the cut.  You clean it, and go to the doctor.  He tells you not to type again until it’s healed and passed the information to your boss.  You still go in to work every day, but just make the coffee and tidy up the conference room – typing is out of the question, and no one will let you sort papers in fear you’d hurt yourself further.

No imagine this goes on for a whole year … your hand finally heals and you get back to work … only to discover you’ve somehow developed carpal tunnel.  It’ll be a few months before you can actually start working now.  Do you really think you’d still have your job?  So why do we afford different privileges to celebrities.

Another quick example is football.  The NFL released a table showing player salaries for the 2008 season the other day, and I found out that Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers made $27 million this year.  He’s the highest paid player in the NFL.  My dad’s response when he heard the news, “if he gets paid that much, he better win every single game.”

Yet Roethlisberger doesn’t win every time.  Still, he’s the highest paid player in a league of wealthy individuals (yes, some players make a measly $300k per year in comparison … but that’s still quite a bit more than the average American pulls in).  Does he deserve this high paycheck if he doesn’t perform to such a high standard?  Most of this $27 million is in bonuses … which, for the rest of us, are based entirely on performance.

What kind of effect does celebrity status have on an individual?  On their place in society?  On their brand?