Sharapova - 20 Bucks for Charity

I happen to like Maria Sharapova. She's not only gorgeous, she's tall, talented and an incredible athlete. Plus you never hear about her doing stupid stuff and making an idiot of herself like so many sports stars and celebrities do. Maybe that's faint praise, but today it's a pretty good measure of the quality of famous people.

Sharapova was in the news today because she auctioned off a "date" with herself to benefit charity. Cool, huh? A date with this incredible sports babe! Some guy (not her boyfriend, by the way) won it for $10,000. Wow - 10,000 bucks for a date with Maria. Probably going to be worth every penny. Seems low actually. Don't we all wish we had that kind of money?

Then I did a little math. As good-intentioned as this is, it is also rather sad that people with this kind of money are so greedy. Sharapova earns about $26 million a year from tennis and all her many product endorsements. She is the highest paid female athlete in the world. The $10,000 that she raised is equivalent to $19.23 for someone who earns a more typical $50,000 a year. Like I said, good intentions aside, this is rather pathetic.

Now maybe Sharapova makes all sorts of donations to worthwhile causes that we simply don't know about. I hope so. But the publicity that this stunt has been receiving has some huge negative, unintentional consequences. Especially when you consider that she didn't actually donate the money - or match it. All she's doing is spending an hour or two with some rich guy having a talk and a meal.

This has made me miss the generosity and humanity of Paul Newman ever more.

Jay Busbee has written a short article for Yahoo Sports about this. Read it here.