Shannon Sharpe, Chad Johnson pledge $50K for Team USA track gold

The Paris 2024 Olympics are well underway, with dozens of medals already having been won by athletes from around the world. Team USA has the early lead in the medal count with 20 at the time of this writing, though only three have been gold so far. That figures to change in a big way when one of the big draws of the Games, track and field, begins in earnest on Friday.

Team USA has high hopes on the track, and deservedly so. Noah Lyles and Sha'Carri Richardson, two of the top sprinters in the world, are expected to be strong contenders for the top of the podium, as are world-record hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and two-time reigning Olympic gold medalist shot putter Ryan Crouser. Other Team USA athletes have a great shot at gold as well, including Rai Benjamin, Gabby Thomas, and Grant Holloway.

Suffice it to say, Team USA is looking to dominate the track in the coming days, and many of their fellow Americans are taking notice. While you and I will be cheering from home, however, former NFL stars Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson are putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to supporting American Olympians.

On a recent episode of their weekly Nightcap show, Shannon and Chad made the disheartening discovery that Team USA athletes that bring home a gold medal are only awarded a mere $37,500 for their efforts. This pales in comparison to what other countries pay out, with some offering more than $500k per gold.

This is hardly right, as Shannon and Chad correctly point out. Are we a first-world country or not? These athletes sacrifice everything to train for years, often for just a few seconds of glory. NBC pays more than $1 billion per Olympics for the right to broadcast the Games, and yet the athletes that are the star attractions see very little monetary benefit.

Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson are doing their part for Team USA athletes

Somebody needs to step up to reward these amazing athletes for their accomplishments, but instead of the U.S. Olympic Committee, it's taken two retired NFL players. Just watch:

Shannon and Chad offered up an extra $50k to some of America's brightest track stars for gold, and notably, they also offered another $50k to any American athlete that breaks a world record at the Games, with Shannon hilariously saying, "I don't give a damn what the event is."

Kudos to Shannon and Chad for backing up their support of Team USA with cold, hard cash. Is an extra $50k going to make Noah Lyles or Sha'Carri Richardson run any faster? Probably not, because they can already fly. But it will go a long way towards saying thank you for a job well done.

Every time the Olympics rolls around, even people that don't normally care about sports start waving the stars and stripes. Olympic athletes are some of our best role models, because they embody the axiom that you can do anything that you put your mind to. It's past time that they get rewarded for their excellence by the country that they play for (attention Kamala Harris: a cool million per gold wouldn't be a bad campaign platform). In the meantime, a fat stack of bills from Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson will have to do.