Lessons from this Seasons

With all of the discussion every year about the lessons people learn from sports, this year's season of baseball is a good teacher. While colleges talk about all of the good things that can be learned from playing sports, and then turn around and show us all the bad things that can be learned from too much money and too little concern about education, professional baseball this year has provide, I think, at least two clear lessons.

The stories coming out of the Boston Red Sox's locker room tell us one very clear lesson. You can pay players too much. When they get so much money and so many years guaranteed they stop performing and they become complacence. The Oakland Raiders had a quarterback from LSU that they paid too much money to and he never saw the need to work hard or to take seriously the organization's advice. Yes, you can pay a player too much and he will lose the passion to perform well.

Along the same lines is the lesson from the teams in the Division play offs and the World Series. Money will not buy you a championship. The payroll of the teams in the League championship series and the World Series have pay rolls that rank between the 10th to the 17th on the list of highest payrolls in the major leagues. Obviously you need to pay your players fairly, but just because you go out and hire and pay the largest payroll in the sport does not insure that you will win the championship. The LA Lakers also discovered the same thing. Most expensive payrolls do not insure a championship.

You can play a player too much. No matter how much you pay for your line up, it does not guarantee you a winner.