People see the exorbitant amounts of money that people in the field of athletics rake in, personally and corporately. Observers are, first, disturbed and, second, curious about how long it will be before the current economic collapse catches up with such fund-grubbers.

The New York Yankees, perhaps the richest and most successful franchise in sports history, would seem to be impervious to a meltdown, right?

Wrong.

It turns out the baseball team that for years has led the way in financial success also is subject to the same kind of deflationary events as other businesses. If the Yankees are having difficulty in the current atmosphere, what is likely to happen to the less-endowed entities, be they professional or collegiate?

The storied Yankees, embarrassed by the vacant seats in the most expensive sections of their gleaming new stadium, say they are slashing ticket prices for about 40 percent of the front-row seats and will be giving away seats to selected current and future 2009 season ticket-holders.

Meltdown time.

Average attendance through the first six games at the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium was only 44,502, down more than 12 percent from last year. Front-row Legend Suite seats in four sections were dropped from $2,500 to $1,250. That is per game, not even a week or a month, let alone a season.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig told owners last fall not to “get too cocky” and overprice tickets. Obviously the Yankees had their own ideas. Management says that the cutbacks are effective for only this season and that previous levels may be reinstated for 2010.

Don’t bet on it. Paying $2,500 for a single-game ticket may help somebody make a big impression but it also tends to stir ire for those who want no part of such a shakedown — and are finding they can live, far more economically, without baseball.

Here is a case where the Yankees got a disturbing number of dollars to relocate their stadium, with all the bells and whistles, and then levied outlandish prices for the seats in an arena. Even in good times, not many New York area people could or would pay $500 and up for single-game seats. These are bad times, and there is every evidence sports teams and their millionaires are going to see a decline in support at the box office. They, too, are due for far leaner months.

Professional teams are not alone. All across the nation, sports operations such as we see at Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri universities are beginning to cut corners to meet the funding crises, present and future. The state of Kansas is facing a $328 million fund shortfall. How can athletic operations escape without damage?

When a super-rich school such as Ohio State has been paring down for some time, we can be sure that the lesser-financed colleges will be even harder hit.

Even with its $115 million annual sports budget, Ohio State is in trouble. With an annual budget of around $60 million, it seems likely Kansas University could be suffering in the near future — if it isn’t already.