Deadspin Classic: Stuart Scott Could Be Yours For $25 Grand (Plus Shipping!)

Originally published Sept. 8, 2005

$25,000.

You can do a lot with $25,000. You can provide food for starving Africans before Sally Struthers eats them first. You can buy 1,518 copies of Bill Simmons new book (not counting shipping, which is probably a bitch). You can even join 2,500,000 of those record clubs where you get 11 CDs for a penny.

You can also hire ESPN anchor Stuart Scott to come speak at your corporate function. The site HireSportsSpeakers.com allows you to bring your favorite ESPN personalities to come talk to you and your fellow corporate drones about leadership, teamwork or, you know, just how to read off a Teleprompter. The site serves as a broker between corporations and sports personalities, negotiating their fees and putting together their schedules.

One would think that paying Stuart Scott $25,000 plus "travel is almost always on top of the fees, usually something like first class for two, ground transportation and hotel" to do anything other than promise never to use the terms "pillow," "cool," "boo" or "yah" again would be somewhat excessive. But Scott isn't even the most expensive anchor on his own network. In fact, he's not even close.

Full list of top ESPN anchors/sports personalities and their speakers fees follows. Start saving those pennies for Tom Tolbert now!

The appearance fees for major "sports personalities."

$15,000 and below Mitch Gaylord - $10,000 Greg Gumbel - $15,000 Ron Jaworski - $10,000 Tony Kornheiser - $15,000 Tom Tolbert - $15,000

For a guy who has a sitcom based on his life — albeit a pretty unwatchable one — we think that's a pretty good price. Well, relatively speaking. By the way ... Mitch Gaylord! Still alive, we guess. Good for him.

$20,000-$30,000 James Brown - $30,000 Rich Eisen - $25,000 Roy Firestone - $22,000 Marion Jones - $20,000 Jim Nantz - $25,000 Dan Patrick - $30,000 Rick Reilly - $25,000 Stuart Scott — $25,000

We don't know how much Dan Patrick made for his Hair Care For Men ads, or, for that matter, how much Rick Reilly got for encouraging his readers to become drunken idiots, but it couldn't have been too far from this amount. By the way, Reilly's amount is probably around the starting salary for entry-level print journalists in this country, if you were wondering what that collective "pounding-head-against-desk" sound was.

$40,000-$50,000 Mitch Albom - $40,000 Chris Berman - $50,000 Jim Rome - $40,000

You know, we wonder if Mitch Albom actually has to be there giving the speech to collect his cash, or if he can just say he was there.

$50,000 and above Bob Costas - $60,500 Al Michaels - $75,000

For an extra 10 grand, Bob Costas will promise not to lecture you about your lack of class and decorum. Don't worry, though; he brings his own stepstool for the podium.

Just For Fun Leslie Nielsen - $70,000

Enrico! Pallazzo! Enrico! Pallazzo!

HireSportsSpeakers.com [Official Site]