THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280694
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: 64 lines
Bruce Smith's salary lament returns the world to its proper orbit.
Not a second too soon, either.
Just the other day, quarterback Jim Harbaugh threatened to undermine the established order by confessing that he was completely satisfied with the relatively paltry $4 million and change the Indianapolis Colts are paying him this year.
``I don't think I should be paid like Troy Aikman or Drew Bledsoe or Dan Marino or any of those guys because I think those guys are a lot better than I am,'' he said.
Harbaugh should be investigated by the NFL players union.
``I'm just telling you I'm not going to ask for Marino numbers because I'm not as good,'' he said.
This will never do. If more athletes adopted Harbaugh's attitude, only players like Emmitt Smith, athletes who carry franchises on their backs, would become millionaires several times over.
Until fairly recently in his career, Harbaugh was a second-string quarterback who could be trusted, if just barely, with a handoff. Now he's making $18 million over four years.
No wonder he is feeling so magnanimous.
Bruce Smith is a different story. Smith is not blessed with the peace of mind of a quarterback who understands how grossly overpaid he is.
As a future Hall of Famer and the fourth-leading NFL career sack leader, Smith has learned to expect more.
When the Buffalo Bills hand out $5 million signing bonuses to others, while he is asked to make do for the time being on $2.2 million a year, Smith is insulted.
The most accomplished football player to emerge from Norfolk, Smith is a big star who believes he has been treated indifferently by management.
``I feel like I'm the lowest person in the organization right now,'' he said the other day.
It's a pride thing, in other words. In any contract dispute, athletes are fond of saying that money is not the first consideration.
They're right. It's the first, second and third consideration.
But in this case, one is tempted to believe Smith when he says the Bills have hurt his feelings. Over the years, he has shown an ability to pout with the best of them.
The pouting, though, belies the warrior inside. He has fought through injuries and pain to help the Bills go to four Super Bowls. Let's give him his due.
Too bad his timing in this case is so bad. Also, it's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for someone being asked to live on $2.2 million. As a result, Smith is taking a lot of heat in Buffalo and elsewhere. As he should.
Then again, it's not as if we're talking about Michael Irvin here. By recent standards of athletic misconduct, Smith's bellyaching is tame stuff.
Keep in mind, too, that Smith, 33, is playing on knees that are on their last legs, so to speak. Promises of a reworked contract do him little good if he leaves Sunday's game on his shield.
As these things go, Harbaugh's comments are far more intriguing than Smith's complaints, which we've heard before, in one form or another, from one athlete or another.
Let this Smith business be a reminder, then, that a different perspective is needed when evaluating impropriety on the part of our athletes.
The new rule of thumb is this: If the player hasn't hired a defense attorney, what's the big deal? by CNB