Over Paid Athletes

Today athletes are the highest paid people in the country, with the exception of Donald Trump and his toupee. It is ridiculous to believe that someone is really worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and all they have to do is play a sport; a sport that millions of people would play free if given the chance.

Why is it that some children aspire to be a professional athlete? The average professional athlete makes over a million dollars a year. That might be why some children want to be athletes. It is unnecessary for someone who plays a game to make that much money. Most parents plan what they want their child to be, so the child grows up liking that not giving any other professional a solitary thought when children are little and they tell you that they want to be a football player or a basketball player. Do you really think that it is for the money, fame or just because it something they like to do. Most children see them playing on television and that is the main thing that interest them. They do not get a chance to see all the other hard workers, because they are not worried about being on television. They are worried about doing what is important, stretching the little money they have each day to make sure that there family is fed and taken care of. Hard workers are living paycheck to paycheck, while athletes are worried about not making as much money as the next sport is making.

People are not recognized enough for the jobs they do they very pro athletes are. You might here about them in the news for a week about what type of tremendous jobs they did of saving thousands of people's lives, but you never hear about each person individually like you do when some athlete score an unbelievable touchdown, or a slam dunk. If hard workers were making half as much money as pro athletes were than more people would be willing to work at different places all around the world. We would be able to have more job openings. More people would be interested in starting their own business, making a name for themselves somewhere other than in the sports business. Their name will live on, and not die off when your career is over because; you had an injury that made you unable to play for the rest of your life.

Where is all the money coming from? The answer is sports fans like you. We pay for the tickets, T-shirts, and apparel of these teams. They can afford to sign new players when they are charging anywhere from $45 to $55 dollars a seat for football and anywhere from $25 to $12 for a basket ball game. By paying this amount of money, you are saying that there is nothing wrong with the amount of money they are paying the athletes even though you are not making nearly as much. Sport fans are contributing to the athlete's paycheck without even knowing it. They might as well be flushing all of their money down the drain. The bad part about it is that is if pro sports players get a reduction in pay then they will raise all kinds of nonsense saying that they will quit if they do not get their money. One other thing is that most athletes only do charitable work because it looks good on their half. Do not get me wrong there are plenty of athletes that do good deeds because they have been through just as much as thoughts people are going through now so, they are trying to reach out and let them know that they are there. However, that does not give them a reason to be paid more plenty of people who participate in those activates daily that every day. They are just never recognized for them good they do just like fire fighters and police officers as mentioned before. They money that is made at basket ball games and football and any other pro sports should be given to the people who are in need not who are in want.

How much money does the average person really need to be able to eat three times a day, have a roof over their head, send their children to school, and have a car? All this could be done on an income between $30,000 and $40,000 easily. (Resnick). Somehow, it was decided that people who labor harder than most, city workers, janitors and factory workers, would be paid less than someone who sits behind a desk all day or someone who plays a game for a living.

Nothing stirs emotion quite like an athlete leaving his hometown team for a multitude of different reasons, but when it is a matter of getting more money, it can get downright ugly. Fans literally see red when this happens and inevitably, there will be a comment or two made with a more general take on athletes pay in general. The consensus or concerns typically raised are "how can these athletes get paid the way they do" and "their salaries are ridiculous especially compared to doctor's (or lawyers, nurses etc) considering what they actually provide to society".(Resnick)

First I have to qualify I am not here to suggest in any shape that an athlete is more critical or vital to our society than say a doctor (or nurse etc); it would be ludicrous to even ponder that. My goal is to simply look at it from a numbers point of view, to look at how rare the professional athlete truly is and to try to rationalize why the athlete is in fact being paid some of these massive funds.

Again, we need doctors, we probably need more (a lot more) than what we have now and the fact is we don't need a single baseball/hockey player in the world in a Maslow Hierarchical sense. Therefore, why athletes are paid significantly higher than almost any doctor is, lawyer, nurse, or garbage man.

While I agree, the contracts appear to be astronomically out of proportion to what the average Joe makes, here are a few reasons athletes get paid what they do:

a) There is a market value, and a team has determined that at 'x' amount of dollars to the player per season the team will in turn be making 'x' amount of dollars on said player, they don't just make up some figure to appease a player or his agent, there is a science and exactness to the economics side. The same reasons movie stars get a big payday is the same reason an athlete does, millions of fans are paying to see them.

b) It is a rare talent, and supply and demand will simply dictate the pay scale. It is much harder to find a player who can consistently hit a 95-mph fastball at the highest level of competition than it is to find a potential doctor, lawyer, or truck driver. A sad truth in life for most of us is that we could be replaced tomorrow and likely would not even be missed, in a production sense.

c) While a doctor or lawyer is obviously a very important position in a practical matter, the fact is there aren't 10-50,000 people lined up to watch this particular person perform every night. Actually, most of us will literally do anything to avoid seeing either! The pro sports