He got that much because he wrote that number into his contract when he was hired, and the reason Home Depot agreed to that provision back then is that Capital has become accustomed to saying yes to Talent, even in cases where Talent does not end up being all that Talented.
Under other circumstances, my answer would be "yes": redirecting talents used wrongly and shifting them to good purposes is a fine idea, one that has been pursued with some success throughout history.
But others would be able to tell you more about Athletic than I. I've enjoyed reading numerous claims from football nerds that they "were on to Athletic before anyone else", as though they had seen them doing keepy-uppy in a dingy club when they were pre-stubble teenagers "and, yes, their talent shined through even then".
With a serious shift to highlight the educational benefits (Is the Miss America Pageant really the largest source of scholarship funds to young women in the U.S.? Uhh, yes)., talent, equal ethnic opportunity, intelligence (there women have pretty darn high GPA's), the focus is no longer on only the physical.
As a result, cults grew up around music played by such "elite" programmers who had the talent (yes, it is a talent) to recognize certain artists and songs before the "crowd" caught up to them.
When Fox took over in Carolina in 2002, after the Panthers' 1-15 disaster, he bluntly told his players that, yes, they had talent, but they weren't tough enough.
Unlike with the folksy sports heroes that we all try to relate to, relating to Woods was always an impossible exercise, because of his unique talent, yes, but also because he's never seemed to have any interest in building such relationships.
