The conventional wisdom in pro sports is that if you're paying a star big money then you have to play him. Otherwise, you're wasting your investment.

Not so in the current case of Cleveland Browns quarterback Brady Quinn, whose benching will cost him millions of dollars in lost performance bonuses. For more on Wall Street performance bonuses, plus a brief comparison between bonuses on Wall Street and in the NFL, see this WSJ story.

By the way, click on the above video and you'll see that Quinn couldn't even get any sugar from his girlfriend during draft day. Poor guy. He's not suffering as much as the average Cleveland resident, but still ...

Only in baseball does money actually walk. It also hits home runs and pitches shutouts.

We'll see this week whether the New York Yankees' money will do all the talking against the relatively broke-ass Minnesota Twins.

Last night, the Twins earned a miraculous come-from-behind berth in the baseball playoffs when Alexi Casilla ($450,000 annual salary) drove in Carlos Gomez ($400,000 annual salary) with the winning run.

The Yanks' Alex Rodriguez makes more money in four days ($458,332) than either of them makes in a year.

Unlike real life, though, baseball's just a game, and Main Street does have a chance of overcoming Wall Street. It won't pay their mortgages, but fans can dream.

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympics, the IOC decided. Chicago, despite a strong pitch by the ever-mellifluous Barack Obama, was eliminated in the first round of voting.

Chicago became a windbag city, wasting an estimated $100 million on its bid, which should piss off anyone, especially during the Great Recession. But at least the city (and Illinois and the federal government) won't be spending billions on the jingoistic boondoggle.

Bread and circuses are great, but this circus costs way too much bread, especially these days.

Nike's denial that it re-signed Michael Vick as a product endorser smells as rotten as Shaq's sneakers. The shoe giant apparently took much more time than you would think before finally denying the deal. Considering the delicate nature of Vick's return to the National Football League, Nike's embrace of its prodigal son could be too much too soon. I mean, would the dog-killer be all that effective yet as an endorser for Nike?

Maybe for Hush Puppies, but not for sneakers.

One of Vick's agents announced the Nike news yesterday at a big-shit sports sponsorship symposium in New York. The announcement flashed through the Web, prompting many to extreme anger.

Ad Age this afternoon sums up the subsequent timeline that makes Nike's denial so suspect:

Later, Nike denied that it was an endorsement deal, saying that it was merely furnishing Vick with "product" to use. Looks for now as if Nike was waiting to gauge the reaction before deciding whether — or just how completely — to deflate its trial balloon.

You'd better hold off on purchasing that imaginative Philadelphia Eagles/Michael Vick puppy-sized jersey.

Denying widely reported news that Nike has re-inked dog-killer Michael Vick to a new endorsement deal, a shoe company spokesman says there is no deal.

Yeah, well, there's some doubt about what the shoe company says. The earlier reports were based on more than just hot air: One of Vick's agents had announced it publicly on Wednesday during the Worldwide Sports Sponsorship Symposium in New York.

Company's scrambling back from those reports as quickly as Vick himself used to. Nike was the last company to abandon Vick back in 2007.

Thanks to failblog.org

Just in time for the holiday-shopping season: that Michael Vick jersey for your cute little puppy. See "Eagles' Vick gets endorsement deal with Nike".

It doesn't matter that the dog-killing quarterback is still finding his way on the field for the Philadelphia Eagles. With the resumption of his lucrative endorsement deal from Nike, his comeback is complete.

Warning: This jersey is not yet officially approved by the ASPCA.

World capital of chutzpah, Dubai is getting its comeuppance. The boomtown's 50 percent drop in real estate prices has "spooked international banks." And some of the desert city's typically outrageous local schemes have been put on hold — although you can still snow-ski in a mall and make plans to build your mansion on the 10th hole of a Tiger Woods-designed golf course. (Click on the video above for a tour with Tiger.)

With the downturn and everything, was it really such a good idea for Dubai to turn down the opportunity, the hype, the pizzazz of having Sex and the City sequel scenes shot there? Too racy for the citizenry, the absolute monarchy's rulers declared.

Dubai may continue to suffer for its hubris. Yes, oil prices are way back up, but it's Abu Dhabi, not Dubai, that has the oil. Like fellow desert city Phoenix in its boomtown days, Dubai has only one industry: growth itself.

Dubai, the WSJ notes, "still hasn't worked out how to reduce its $80 billion debt pile beyond going cap in hand to its oil-rich cousins in Abu Dhabi or international banks, which remain reluctant to lend."

Basketball player Jeremy Tyler will skip his senior year in high school in San Diego to play pro basketball in Israel. Tyler signed a contract for a reported $140,000 annually to play for Maccabi Haifa, which is owned by American businessman Jeffrey Rosen.

Stop your whining, sports fans. It is unusual for a U.S. kid to skip his last year in high school to go pro (Tyler's said to be the first), but this is probably an excellent business decision for the big young fella. Sports commentators in the U.S. tend to argue that it's a crying shame that a kid would sacrifice school for his athletic career.

But young hockey players leave home in their mid-teens to sharpen their skills in what are essentially professional junior leagues. And in Europe, it's extremely common for talented athletes to turn semi-pro or pro in their teens. Star French guard Tony Parker (now with the San Antonio Spurs) turned pro when he was 17.

LeBron James was all business off the court before he proved that he is all business on the court. There was never a question whether he would play college basketball — no way. Why sacrifice the money? And why play for free for a college that will make millions of dollars off you?

The stock market was simply humming this afternoon, prompting reporters to resurrect all sorts of optimistic adjectives — viz., the WSJ's "bullish analyst comments, benign economic data and favorable profit reports."

Speaking of "favorable," New York AG Andy Cuomo is saying that nine banks that got $175 billion in TARP bailout money paid out $32.6 billion in bonuses last year. Cuomo's publicists summed it up quite well today: "When the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well."

People in Boston have other reasons for anger: They just found out that Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, their beloved "Big Papi," is reportedly on the list of steroid users from 2003, along with Manny Ramirez, who's already been besmirched with the doper tag.

But if baseball fans could just turn their attention to Wall Street (and forget about that niggling annoyance of the bonuses), they'd see that the Dow industrials topped 9200 by early afternoon. (November '08 was the last time that happened.)

A perfect mediocrity with a .500 record at the All-Star break, the Chicago Cubs are doing even worse off the field: To finish the planned sale of the team, the Cubs "may become the first Major League Baseball team in 39 years to file for bankruptcy."