OK, it’s obvious that professional sports are big business. An American football team was just sold for more the Six Billion dollars. The best paid college football coach makes Eleven Million dollars a year. The best paid soccer player, well past his prime, makes more than One Hundred Million dollars a year.
But there’s another point the Bozosphere wants to make. It’s what in professional athletics we call the One Year Too Many.
Willie Mays, the great center fielder for the Giants, ended his career with the New York Mets, batting a miserable .211 in his last year playing professional ball. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, was a pale shadow of himself during his last years with the Washington Wizards. The list goes on and includes players you’ve either forgotten or never heard of.
Why didn’t they quit while they still had a good fraction of their skills? It might have been for the money. It might have been that that sport was the principal part of their self definition. It might have been that they didn’t quite appreciate how much their talent had deteriorated with age. In any case, it was One Year Too Many.
Recently economic news from China suggests that the real estate market is in deep yoghurt. The New York Times reports that there are almost Four Hundred Billion dollars in loan defaults on the horizon. Why? Because the real estate developers overbuilt. Before the COVID pandemic, times were booming. Developers were doing very nicely, thank you, in the property markets. Now there are many unfinished buildings as well as many unoccupied buildings. Without tenants, there is insufficient income to pay off the building loans.
Many American real estate firms now face the same problems with unoccupied office space. Even without the effects of COVID, there was a glut of office space in many large cities.
Just like professional athletes, developers did what they knew how to do and did not realize that those days were coming to an end and it was time to quit. No doubt some thought that they were making good money and should just continue doing what they knew. Keep going with a horse that’s winning.
Just like One Year Too Many, there’s also One Building Too Many.
It’s not just real estate. It’s One Hoola Hoop Too Many. It’s One Beanie Baby Too Many. It’s One Restaurant on a given street Too Many. We could go on, but you get the idea.