If you ever needed an illustration of how differently the NFL and Major League Baseball run a business, look no farther than the Yankees getting CC Sabathia and the two highest players on the Jets roster, Calvin Pace and Brett Favre.

Pace and Favre will make roughly $12 million this year. Sabathia, for those of you who were vacationing in a cave yesterday, will pull in $161 milly for seven years, which for argument’s sake averages $23M a year. (Obviously with incentives and a heavy backend that’s not exactly the way the deal will work, and Sabathia stands to make much more if he completes the terms.)

But Brett Favre is not making A-Rod money, as Busta Rhymes so eloquently puts it. (Which is estimated at $30 M a year.)

To put it simply, baseball tends to favor the player, while the owners share profits and power in football. Baseball rosters are 23 to the NFL’s 53, and on average, baseball players make roughly twice what football player do.

In other news, coach Eric Mangini shortened practice on Wednesday and, although he didn’t consult me on it, I’d venture it’s because at this point in the season the problem is not that a player hasn’t had enough reps. It’s mental, it’s attention to the playbook, it’s anticipating where you need to be on the field.

“As it gets later in the season, you try to scale some things back as much as possible while still getting everything done that you need to get done,” Mangini said. “We’ve done that the last two years. It happened at different points during the season. Really, the practices overall have been scaled back, I’d say substantially based on last year and the year before. This is just a scaling-back of a scaling-back (smiling).”

Mangini would rather eat nails than admit he is doing anything even a teensy bit differently, but behind closed doors, it’s a different story. Mangini had a tense meeting on Monday where players got called out for missing assignments and plays. LB David Bowens said no one took offense, that two weeks of losses justify it.

Wednesday’s injury report.

The Jets listed WR Brad Smith as DNP, but he was out there despite a listed “head” injury. In the past (Laveranues Coles and Eric Smith, that’s specifically a concussion). Limited players were LB Eric Barton (knee), DB Ahmad Carroll (foot), Coles (thigh), LB David Harris (groin), NT Kris Jenkins (hip) and LB Bryan Thomas (shoulder). Fully participating: WR Jerricho Cotchery (shoulder), DB James Ihedigbo (neck) and LB Jason Trusnik.

For the Bills, CB Jabari Greer (knee) was limited, and whole slew did not participate including QB Trent Edwards (groin), CB Dustin Fox (groin), WR Josh Reed (back), DE Aaron Schobel (foot), DT Marcus Stroud (hip) and S Donte Whitner (illness).

Update: 2:17 p.m.: Mangini confirmed that Brad Smith has a concussion.

He also confirmed that he was aware the playoffs are on the line.

“Everybody knows that at this time of year that either it’s the end of the season or the playoffs are looming,” Mangini said.