How about the "5 million dollar bonus" (I'm guessing restricted stocks) to retain one top engineer? We must be switching over from brawn to brains in the human value chain, which is apt, as the ENTIRE value of NFL teams doesn't even equal the value of any ONE of the companies mentioned (Total value of Facebook is $50B while total value for combined NFL teams is ~37B for example). Either that, or we're in a bubble. I, being the incurable optimist, vote for the former.
"Elite brain" isn't some clean up hitter lighting up code or architecting for you. Elite brain is CTO, or EVP of technology. In terms of e.g., basketball, the Micky Arison of Apple is undoubtedly Steve Jobs, so LeBron is someone like Jony Ives. I'm quite sure Jony is walking away with way more than $20M after designing the iPod, iPhone and iPad (some speculate it's somewhere in the $150-200 Million range).
