Hotel California: Sam Darnold Can Check Out Any Time He Likes, But His Money Can Never Leave

<![CDATA[If there's one thing positive to say about California, besides the glorious weather 44 weeks a year, it's that the state serves as the perfect antidote to a political columnist suffering writer's block. As the rest of the world continues to watch American military personnel and assets array themselves into attack formation around the Straits of Hormuz for a seemingly inevitable confrontation with Iran, and Olympic mixed doubles curling fever captures the country's imagination, it's otherwise been kind of a meh couple of days to start the new week. Fortunately, there's a cluster of California-centric stories that deserve a little attention and a lot of mockery. In a Super Bowl that was one of the more lackluster games in recent memory, it was at least fun to see a quarterback that so many teams had given up on come into his own against a very capable defensive unit in New England and play just well enough to get his ring. I'm talking about Sam Darnold of the Seattle Seahawks. The former Jet, Panther, Forty-Niner, and Viking earned $3.2 million in the first year of his contract with the Seahawks, and also pocketed a $32 million signing bonus. In addition, as part of the winning team in the Super Bowl, his share of the bonus was $178,000. Now he reportedly got extra money from the team in incentives if the team got to the Super Bowl and/or won it, but the point is that because the game was played in Gavin Newsom's Hotel California, the jock tax here took a sizeable bite. Here's former Bengals quarterback and CBS analyst Boomer Esiason with the call on WFAN:]]>