A revelation that blew my mind.

It's not something I've ever really thought about until James Mirtle's new blog post came up in my twitter feed.

Gary Bettman makes SEVEN-f*****g-million-dollars!

Are you kidding me? I've always felt slightly bad when Bettman would show up to give the Stanley Cup to the winning captain and the fans would un-mercilessly boo the s**t out of him.

I no longer feel bad. There's no way the job this guy does warrents $7 million. For some naive reason I always thought the guy would make something like six-figures... but definitely not seven figures.

It's just a little increase... I swear.

What's more annoying about this realization is that it's always the "overpaid players" that bear the brunt of negative public opinion. And yet there are only 14 actual players that make more than Bettman in a season.

Bettman makes more than NFL commissioner Roger Goodell who makes $6.5 million. But significantly less than baseball's commissioner Bud Selig who makes $14.5 million. Regardless, it's a fairly large chunk of change for a league that is financially propping up some of it's franchises. And it's also a fair chunk of change in a league that has a newly instated salary cap. Too bad the formula for increasing the Salary Cap doesnt' seem to apply to Bettman's salary:

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman received a 27 percent raise during the 2007-08
season, pushing his salary with benefits to $7.1 million for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 2008, according to league tax filings.

The salary is the highest Bettman has earned in his 16 years as commissioner and a major increase from his pre-lockout salary of $3.77 million. League tax filings, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, show Bettman received $4,197,694 in compensation from the NHL and an additional $2,911,550 in compensation and benefits from the NHL's business arm, NHL Enterprises.

— Tripp Mickle, SportsBusiness Journal