Sports Illustrated released an article with the 50 highest paid American athletes of 2009. GT had Starbury and Teixeira represented on the the list at #17 and #14, respectively. I went through the list and broke down the players by college/conference. It's pretty interesting seeing the way sports pay their players as well. No surprise to me is that 22 of the 50 athletes are NBA guys, 14 are from the MLB, 9 from the NFL, 3 from the PGA, and Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon finish the list off. The highest paid is obviously Tiger by almost double.

8 of the top 50 are from the ACC, which ain't too shabby. Especially considering it's three different sports. The Pac 10 has 6 of the top 50, the Big East has 5 all from the NBA, the SEC has 4, and the Big 12 and Big 10 both have 2 represented. This means that 20 of the top 50 highest paid American athletes didn't attend a four year university before going pro. Pretty interesting.

The most represented university on the list of athletes was UNC with 3. GT's 2 were tied with Tennessee, Syracuse, and Arizona. There were 19 Division I universities with only one representative in the top 50. No one from uga made the list...

I thought the article was interesting. Any thoughts?