17 Million "Dollar" Moment

When most American's think of million dollar contracts in the professional sports industry (can I call it an industry? what exactly are they building?) they naturally think of baseball players and football players (A-Rod makes $25 million+ a year). Of course, this is an Ameri-centric view as other sports do exist and are even more popular (taking the world as a whole) than baseball and football combined. Soccer is a prime example of this and the English Premiership is fiscally no slouch. Thus, highly talented soccer players like Michael Owen (a personal favorite) are of substantial worth. Recently Owen was bought by Newcastle for a club record of around £17 million. To wrap your mind around that, it converts to more than $31 million USD. The 2nd most expensive purchase was £15 million for Shearer (also by Newcastle) in 1996. Money spent on these kinds of purchases have a bit of a different meaning than the reported sums for baseball players, but think of it this way, if A-Rod were a free agent right now, would any team pay $31 million+ for him?