Are professional athletes overpaid? This question is frequently asked and is debated about all the time. Being a professional athlete takes a lot more hard work and dedication than credited. Most professional athletes have been playing sports all of their life and are some of the most elite athletes in the world. It takes hard work and dedication to become a professional athlete, and if they do not perform to their expected potential, they can get displaced from the team. They often practice more than 40 hours a week and that doesn’t include team meetings and watching film. They also must be in extraordinary shape since they are competing against some of the best athletes in the world. Their jobs are also not secure, if an athlete inquires a serious injury, it can end their career and may result in them having to retire. And they can be replaced by a better athlete at any time. Professional athletes also do not have control over the state they live in, because most players live in their team’s home state, and if they get traded they have to move. Majority of professional athletes are book smart too. Because during college they are constantly on the road playing games and they have limited time to do their homework and maintain a 2.0 GPA (grade point average).
Most high paying jobs have a limited supply of people in their field. There are only 954,000 doctors in the United States today and only 800,000 lawyers. Well only 5 percent of athletes in high school play sports in college (5 out of every 100 student athletes) and only 3 percent of the college players go on to play professional sports, which leaves around 16,500 prefessional athletes. I must say that most high paying careers like doctors, lawyers, and professional athletes are not easy to come by and deserve their pay.
To me athletes are overpaid of course, everything that you want comes with hard work and you know the choices that comes with what you choose in life. To compare athletes to the work of doctors and lawyers are not fair because in both of those career choices it deals with someones life. With everything you do in life there is competition. The money that the athletes make could be used to pay the underpaid teachers who had to educate them so that they could make to college. There is always better use for all the money that they throw at athletes.
ReplyDeleteThere are professions out there which are much more important than a professional athlete. For instance, there are police officers and firefighters whose lives are on the line each and every day. They make a mediocre salary. Then there are the true hero’s, which are called soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines and coastguardsmen who put their lives on the line for our freedom and get paid “dirt” for doing so.
ReplyDeletePeople tend to forget those who risk their lives for this country, but at the same time people will never forget sports legends, such as Michael Jordan. It is ridiculous to believe that one single athlete 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 for free if given the chance.
Where does all this money come from to pay these awesome athletes this kind of money? It mostly comes from people consisting of the working class that pay outrageous amount of money to attend a sporting event, these people are simply known as fans. The same fans that cry when their team loses, celebrates when they win and will pay $6 for a beer or $7 for a deluxe hamburger at the game. Ticket prices continue to go up every year so owners can pay these athletes their outrageous contracts that they demand. How fair is it for the fans to drop at least $100 to go see a Professional baseball game? When players like Alex Rodriguez who makes $22 million dollars per year, according to an ESPN article titled MLB players, jog to first base on a groundball or a pitcher not start a game because he isn’t feeling well. If an average hard working person missed a couple days of work a month because they were sick or hurt, they would be fired. In the case of athletes, they seem to go on a two week paid vacation, otherwise known as the 15-day disabled list.
In the National Basketball Association (NBA), the minimum salary, according to an Insidehoops article, depends on the player’s tenure in the NBA. The minimum salary ranges from $440,000 to $1.3 million. In Major League Baseball the minimum salary is $400,000, but the average salary is about $2.3 million, according to an ESPN article titled MLB players, Owners Announce five year Labor deal. The National Football League minimum salary for a player is like the NBA; it's based on how long the player has been in the league. Average rookies minimum salaries can range anywhere from $325,000 to $800,000 per year. These are all the MINIMUM salaries for professional athlete’s, think about how much more money the elite athletes make.
Also, another thing people tend to forget is that athletes not only get paid these outrageous contracts, but they also receive millions on top of that from endorsements. Nike pays Tiger Woods $20 million a year, General Motors pays him $6 million and American Express pays him $5.2 million, according to GolfToday. So, you mean to tell me that one person should be allowed to have this much money to spend, when the United States is trillions of dollars in debt?
Here i must admit, athletes are payed at the appropriate amount. The athletes in today's professional sports perform the best at the sport they participate in. If they weren't people who support the sports wouldnt waste their money and time on watching these "overpaid" athletes perform. Athletes sacrifice their bodies every time they engage in activities. Unlike a lawyer a athlete cant have a bad break and still have a job for years. If they dont heal in a certain amount of time they will lose there job. So I believe that athletes get exactly what they deserve perform well get more don't do the job to the best of there ability then the will lose all they have worked for. So more power to athlete's in the professional field now and the future ones also.
ReplyDeleteThere are many professions out here in the world today that are very vital to people’s everyday life. For example, policemen help enforce the law and try to help make the community safe, but in the United States there are a total of about 800,000 law enforcers according to the National Employment Matrix. And firefighters help put out dangerous fires, well according to the NFPA there are about 323,000 career firefighters and about 825,000 volunteer firefighters. Then you also have millions of soldiers that risk their life everyday to protect their country. I admire all of these professions. But professional athletes make their money from the tickets that every day people and fans buy, and are paid from the owner. You also have the elite athletes like Hall of Famer Michael Jordan who makes money off of endorsements too. According to the Internet Movie Database, Jordan makes about $80 million off of Nike endorsements, in which people who buy these products contribute too.
ReplyDeleteSince America is trillions of dollars in debt, and there are so many law enforcers, firefighters, and soldiers, I do not believe that the Federal Government is able to pay all of them the money that they deserve.