Some players choose full belly over fat wallet
Instead of paying high salaries for sports players who handle pucks and pigskins, why not offer them ducks and pigs? Wheat and meat for avoiding defeat? Flax for quarterback sacks?
This would spark a new market, and which European country would dare block agricultural goods when its native-born athletes return victorious from an NHL all-star game?
Why, they might welcome players who want to parade their bounty down the streets, or who are searching for a tax-free silo to store their wealth.
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Canada would finally have ample resources to entice and keep marquee players.
Seem far-fetched? Not according to a Reuters story about a Romanian soccer team.
It says the “second division soccer club Olimpia Satu Mare” was cash-strapped. Local sponsors gave such things as a pig and calf under contract – and the club was happy to have them so it could feed its players during the training session.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported, “last year a goalkeeper moved to a rival club after receiving a truckload of firewood. In 1998, another club sold its best player for two tons of meat.”
The meat was not identified. If it were a baseball team, it would have been hotdogs.
Perhaps there is merit in the idea. International politics affect and interfere with agricultural trade. Food has been used for leverage in wars, in exchange for oil and to influence democracy.
Food – or the lack of it – has moved countries to unite, caused regimes to crumble and wiped out generations in some countries.
What greater power can there be than to possess and control food?
When the sports world realizes food’s true potential, both athletes and farmers could score big.
