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By Bill Contz
For the Mirror
Back in 1990, a recording artist known as Callaway scored a hit with a song titled "I Wanna Be Rich."
It's likely this tune was playing nonstop in the front offices of several big market major league teams while being simultaneously hummed by key Southeastern Conference decision makers.
The feeding frenzy witnessed as we neared the July 31 MLB trade deadline served to solidify the state of California as the new epicenter of the baseball universe with San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles all plucking elite talent from teams going nowhere, mired in mediocrity and looking to dump payroll.
Evidently the state's raging forest fires, unpredictable mudslides and oppressive heat waves failed to deter these NL West rivals from 11th hour wheeling and dealing.
Cubs' slugger Kris Bryant now dons a Giants' uniform while former Pirate Adam Frazier finds himself in Padre pinstripes.
Meanwhile out in Chavez Ravine, clubhouse guys have worked diligently to rearrange locker stalls so flamethrower Max Scherzer can store his belongings near fellow Cy Young candidates Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw.
Talent in the National League now tilts so severely to the west that Commissioner Rob Manfred should consider combining these three teams, have the Angels loan them Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani for the remainder of the regular season then have this club barnstorm around the country as the West Coast Traveling All-Stars.
Not to be outdone, the Yankees worked to secure the services of long-ballers Joey Gallo and Mike Rizzo for their own stretch run.
Hey, why not just cancel the divisional and league championship series and have these Bronx Bombers Plus battle the Californians in a 15-game, no-holds-barred, winner-take-all World Series?
Not to be outdone, college football's Southeastern Conference will soon welcome in Big 12 cornerstones Oklahoma and Texas as their 15th and 16th members.
Logistics certainly had very little to do with this decision for if it did, the SEC could have easily lured two more Florida schools, Miami and Florida State, from the bloated, quasi-competitive, 15-team, Clemson-dominated ACC.
What's crazy is that once this move is finalized and college football expands its playoff to 12 teams -- a question of when, not if -- as many as four of the annual participants could conceivably be selected from the same conference.
I guess if Florida and Texas can account for one-third of all new COVID cases in the U.S., then why can't the SEC lock down 33% of available CFB playoff slots?
In a related note, Alabama's board of trustees' compensation committee, a group deemed inherently necessary when your football program grosses $100 million annually, formally approved an eight-year extension worth a combined $84.8 million for the Tide's head ball coach, Nick Saban.
His compensation will include a relatively paltry $275,000 base salary along with a personal services fee of $8.425 million.
Go figure.
These moves are the food equivalent of instructing your waiter to take your creme brulee back to the kitchen so the head chef can add a trowel-sized dollop of Cool Whip to it all the while another of your dinner guests insists on having hot fudge ladled all over their slice of southern pecan pie.
When does it end? Can't we put some type of salary cap on indulgence? How much richer can the rich really get?
Contz was a starting offensive tackle on Penn State's first national championship team in 1982 and played six NFL seasons. He published a book in 2017, "When the Lions Roared: Joe Paterno and One of College Football's Greatest Teams." He resides in Pittsburgh.