In 1982, baseball historian Bill James compiled a list of factors that can cause athletes to be overrated: playing in major markets or on championship teams, having good media skills, excelling in statistical categories that fans understand. "If you fed a computer this input," James wrote, "and asked it to pick the perfect overrated player, the computer would tell you: Steve Garvey." Well, duh!

I had the same reaction when the editors of The Magazine asked me to determine which sports star is primed to become the most prolific cash cow of all time. Even before the "Pounding at Pebble," I didn't need a computer to figure it out. But if I had the right software, I'd program it to look for an athlete dominant and young, in a sport popular enough to offer big money but safe enough to allow a long career, with a personality that appeals to all kinds of consumers and the savvy to exploit that popularity.

In other words, I'd program it to spit out Tiger Woods.

"Tiger Woods is the perfect earner," says Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. "Think of him as the offspring of Arnold Palmer and Michael Jordan." Now there's an image. But Burton has a point. In the '60s, Mark McCormack's IMG showed the world how to market a great golfer, and Arnie became the first athletic endorsement machine. In the '90s, Jordan and überagent David Falk took MJ global, creating the first athlete-as-mega-business. Now Woods, applying lessons from both, is using his phenomenal popularity to assemble an endorsement empire on his own terms. Explains Mark Steinberg, Tiger's agent at IMG: "We're not interested in contractual relationships. We're interested in business partnerships." Translation: When companies like Nike and American Express use Woods' image -- Steinberg calls them "our licensees" -- Tiger doesn't want the kind of one-time payment he'd get from putting his face on a Wheaties box. He wants a chunk of their business. Jordan started it; Tiger's raising the stakes.

At the same time, Woods is expanding the horizons of golf -- and the pie available for his own future earnings. He's brought so many new fans to the sport -- ratings for the final round of each of the four majors collectively jumped 56% the year he broke the Masters scoring record -- that TV networks are throwing money at the PGA. Prizes now total $3.2 million per event, up 87% since 1997. If purses keep rising even near this rate, and it's likely they will, the 125th-ranked money winner on the Tour will be making at least $500,000 within five years (last year's No. 125, Charles Raulerson, earned $327,000). That's one reason, perhaps, that Tiger hasn't engendered too much resentment among PGA players. It's hard to get mad at a guy who's lifting everybody's tax bill. As for Tiger: Already the PGA's career earnings leader at the age of 24, he's likely to earn an amount that will make almost anyone but Bill Gates' heirs jealous. Just how much green are we talking about? Take a deep breath -- better than $6 billion. And I'm being conservative. Here's how he'll earn it:

PGA winnings: In pocketing $6.6 million on the tour last year, Tiger didn't just obliterate the mark for prize money, he set a new standard for dominance. Woods won 82% more than second-place David Duval, a gap larger than any since Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan dominated in the '40s -- and one that highlights Tiger's uniqueness even more dramatically than those 15 strokes at Pebble Beach. After a decade when money leaders typically pulled in about 2.7% of total prizes, Woods earned 5% of Tour pots. And that was no fluke: He's on pace to earn $8.8 million in 2000, or 5.6% of total prizes. In figuring his future PGA winnings, I assumed that a) prize money will keep pace with its growth in the '90s as long as Woods is active; b) Tiger will maintain his mastery only until age 30, when his winnings rate will slowly decline until age 50; and c) he will have five dominant and then 10 declining seasons on the Senior Tour. Career PGA winnings through age 65: $1.17 billion.

Worldwide winnings: Tiger earns about 14% of his prize money off the PGA Tour. Using calculations similar to the ones above, I added $207 million to his lifetime total.

Appearance fees: Not that tournament organizers like to talk about under-the-table payments, but Woods earned a reported $1 million just to show up for the Players Championship of Europe last year. Figuring that Tiger will command at least that much as long as he's playing, I tacked on a similar gain (percentage-wise) to his future worldwide earnings. That's another $132 million.

Endorsements: Tiger wears Nike from head to toe, and his recent switch from Titleist to Nike golf balls -- gee, could that have happened at a better time for Phil Knight? -- could reportedly net him an extra $40 million over the next five years (he's yet to sign the deal). He has also shilled for American Express, Asahi, General Mills, Golf Digest and Rolex, so even in 1998, a bad year for his Nike merchandise, Woods collected $25 million in endorsement checks. I assumed the Nike ball deal will go through, added its terms to Woods' average endorsement take from 1997 through 1999 and increased the total at a modest 8% a year until he hits 30. Then I let his endorsement earnings track his prize money. Result: $4.6 billion.

Grand total: $6,109,000,000.

Not a bad little career, certainly the best among his peers. Can anyone give him a run? Well, Jordan has made more over his lifetime than any athlete -- $419 million from contracts and endorsements, according to Forbes -- but his is not the name I hear when I talk to the people who track jock dollars. MJ, after all, is retired from the court and has cut back on his endorsement activities. Instead, the experts mention Shaq and Kobe. Both are young champs playing in a huge media market. Shaq, in particular, is already wired into the Internet and interactive marketing opportunities. (There's big, big money to be made there -- when someone figures out exactly how to do it.)

But neither Laker has anything like Woods' selling power: Last year, O'Neal made $3.5 million from endorsements, less than a 10th of Tiger's take. Moreover, Kobe and Shaq play a team sport. All Woods has to do is figure out how to shoot a 58 someday; Shaq and Kobe have to continue to coexist with each other and with a salary cap. And, I'm guessing, none will be cashing in on the Senior Basketball Tour (although you never know what NBA commish David Stern might think up).

Actually, Tiger's stiffest competition in the career earnings race looks like hotshot Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, who made $49 million last year from prizes and endorsements, more than any athlete in any sport. (Yes, F-1's a bit of a bigger deal than you thought.) Schumacher's earnings have been growing steadily since 1995, and at the pace he's setting, he could make $100 million a year by 2005 and $1 billion lifetime by 2010, with a lot of years left in the cockpit after that. In racing, those who survive can compete seriously well into their 40s (see Dale Earnhardt). But even if Schumacher's career has legs almost as long as Tiger's, his endorsement appeal is not as boundless. Fact is, it's much harder for a European to crack American markets than for an American to sell his image overseas.

Truth is, Woods simply has a higher ceiling than other athletes because even at No.1 with a bullet, he still has the capacity to surprise us, as he showed at Pebble Beach. "I didn't think Tiger was going to make the cut in his first event, but he did," says Bev Norwood, vice president of golf publishing at IMG. "I didn't think he'd win any of his first seven events. He won two. I didn't think he was going to win the Masters so early. He won by 12 strokes. Business-wise, I can't say that there is a ceiling there. I don't think there's another sports person in the world who can approach him. Very few entertainers can." (Okay, Bev's a little biased.)

Two more points: My $6 billion-plus estimate leaves out any guess as to how much Tiger will reap in dot.com land, so this projection doesn't include cash from digital deals that are somewhere down the pike. Most important, I've also left out Tiger's personal investments, since he keeps his portfolio to himself. But even if he socks away a small portion of his winnings, Woods stands to gain more than any other athlete on the planet from what financial types call "the power of compounding interest." Because he is making so much at such a young age -- "In 15 years, he still won't be 40," says Steinberg, with a touch of wonder -- Woods has more years for his money to earn more money. Suppose he places just one-third of his earnings in investments that return 10% a year (less than the stock market's historical return, by the way) and that taxes gobble up 40% of his annual gains. By the time he's ready to retire, Tiger will have tacked on another billion or so in investment gains. And something tells me the son of Earl Woods is probably saving more than my projection assumes. When was the last time you read about Tiger building an amusement park in his backyard?

Yes, we might get sick of Tiger before he can start counting his billions. But keep in mind that Palmer, in his fifth decade as a pitchman, was the fourth-highest-paid athletic endorser last year, making $19 million. And much like Arnie became a working-class-hero-in-an-upper-crust-world in the '50s and '60s, Tiger benefits today from an equally refreshing non-white-star-in-a-white-man's-world persona. And this while barely speaking a word in his commercials. Woods always says that he just wants to win majors. That's probably true. For now. "I'd like to get more involved in the business side of my life," he said recently. "And I will." When that happens, even six or seven gigabucks may turn out to be pocket change.

This article appears in the July 10, 2000 issue of ESPN The Magazine.