NBA stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving have both been testy with the media this season, complaining about the stress of constant speculation that they planned to leave their teams, the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics, in order to become free agents and perhaps join forces next season. Just one woman was ranked among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2019, according to Forbes (Serena Williams, at No. Bruh people, if you dont want athletes to earn so much, dont watch em. But does the publics demand signal a value system that needs recalibrating? Lower pay could minimize this issue and make players more loyal to their teams. They have to leave their families for extended periods of time, get put into highly dangerous situations, and often experience both long-lasting physical and mental issues following their service. Obviously, not all professional athletes make that much money, but even most rookies make more money than some of the worlds other leading professionals. Yet, a professional NBA player may earn the same amount as the average yearly salary of a teacher when they score a point. continue to use the site without a What is the Monitor difference? As fans, we encourage and allow for athletes to get paid higher and higher salaries each year, because we keep coming back for more. The NCAA is the political elite of college athletics..The NCAA holds the position that collegiate athletes are considered amateur athletes and it should be illegal to receive compensation for their actions on the field. Why do athletes get paid too much? But as long as they keep playing, Ill keep paying. they need more money for there payments and if they get very terrible injures. NCAA President Mark Emmert echoed this in 2014 when he said The overwhelming majority of student-athletes, across all sports, play college athletics as part of their educational experience and for the love of their sport not to be paid a salary. On the other side of the spectrum, some college athletes hold the position that NCAA athletes deserve to be compensated for their respective revenue-generating sports. Its not just the stars who are becoming wealthier than some developing nations. Have you ever thought about about how much time and effort college athletes put into their sport? logged you out. Five athletic conferences bring in more than $250 million annually. Have you ever thought about it? Since most athletes have reasonable paychecks but wind up spending their money within 24 hours. When will talk of reparations be finished?. Why do they get this much money? and $25.9million respectively )and brought in more ($85.2 million and $103.8 million). These sports aren't even played for that long during the year. Imagine not being able to recover fully from a traumatic injury and being overcome with medical bills. Why or why not? Does LeBrons legacy compare to Jordans? Should Professional Sports Be Paid More Than Other Jobs? Will it pay off? But these are only some of the reasons that pro athletes get paid too much. The typical actual salary, not including major signing bonuses, for the NFLs top players were little over half that of the MLB at about $9 million. Wealth isnt a guaranteed shield against psychological or emotional issues. Athletes only play for some time then practice and are getting paid Millions of dollars compared to people. Pro athletes get paid millions of dollars to hit a ball. In fact, they actually worked for it over many years of training and dedication. Free term papers & essays - Should Professional Athletes be paid the enormous salaries they do, Sports & Recreation It went up because his jersey sales, merchandise sales went up, and more people are going to want to go to his games or watch him on TV so the ratings will go up and ticket sales will go up, If you think of it, they dont get too much money compared to what the team makes or the TV channel makes. It all could boil down to one word: television. About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review under the charming heading of do things that dont interest you: Many things that end up being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. But the immediacy of sports is such that viewers want to watch games as they happen, which means that advertisers get much more exposure than they do on other types of shows. What is the Borgen Project and Why Should You be Involved? Since then the pool of money that players and owners divide has grown exponentially, and the biggest reason for that increase can be expressed with two letters: TV. And in a world where some professional athletes are paid almost 100 times the salary of the average U.S. teacher, it comes as no surprise. Not all of this money comes from the government though. A successful business is only going to pay their employees what they feel they are worth. But the market is created in part by the publics demand, and does that demand signal a value system that needs recalibrating? With professional athletes commanding salaries in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it raises the question: Is this just what the market will bear or are societys values out of whack? The startling reality is that the gender gap in pay reaches far outside the sporting world. For my last post, I will focus on the astronomical amounts of money professional athletes get paid. There were undoubtedly winter nights in the late 1950s when some of the patrons at Ruggeris, an Italian restaurant in St. Louis, did a double take at the sight of a short, squat man with jug-handle ears framing his familiar face bringing their meals to the table. Legend has it that it was at Ruggeris, which has since been renamed Favazzas, that Berra coined one of his famous malaprops in talking about a competing eatery: Nobody goes there anymore. Alabama was only topped by the University of Michigan and the University of Texas who spent less (. Close Menu Search News Both of these teams coaches are their states highest paid public employees as well. Why should any of us care about the gender pay gap in professional sports? People know that doctors and firefighters save lives, while athletes play a game to make money. Neurosurgeons put in countless hours every day working to save and improve the lives of other people. Alabama spent $36.9 million that year, but brought in $82 million. Inequality in sports has been shown in many ways. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. We need to keep in mind where sports fits into todays society and how the industry has grown, says Leland Faust, an investment adviser and founder of a firm, CSI Capital Management, that represents professional athletes. Yes, They Deserve Every Dollar. Familiar questions were asked: Are those hefty paychecks simply the result of the supply-and-demand forces of capitalism determining what the market will bear? SO BOO HOO, LILY Dec 19, 2017 at 1:55 pm, LILY Dec 19, 2017 at 1:52 pm, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY DO THEY NEED SO MUCH MONEY PPL. Their waiter for the evening was Yogi Berra, the All-Star catcher for the New York Yankees. Its not everyday that an athlete wakes up to a 20 million dollar contract. i made an article. Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder has a salary of $207 million over 5 years. think about that before you but a dumb comment like that. The answer should be NO. Professional athletes don't deserve to be idolized with highly-inflated salaries. you are agreeing to our, Why Russia crisis requires US vigilance and an eye for opportunity, With affirmative action gone, California shows what may come next, Mutiny fizzled, but it put Putin on the back foot, What Supreme Court rejection of student loan relief means, How religious liberty became the Roberts courts North Star, Brazil: Populist former President Bolsonaro barred from office until 2030, ROBERT HANASHIRO-USA TODAY SPORTS/NPSTRANS/TOPPIC, How truth bombs for Russians may end the war, JASON GETZ-USA TODAY SPORTS/NPSTRANS/TOPPIC. I feel like they should make a good amount of money because they do well at what they do. Professional athletes must be well remunerated but can not be overpaid when there are many issues around the world that can be solved with money. During the 1950s, Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Carl Furillo ran a Queens deli in the winter, and Hall of Fame New York Giants quarterback Y.A. He spent so much time injured that New York Post beat writer George King III dubbed Pavano . But somehow owners excesses have never drawn the same scrutiny as players, maybe because there is a far longer history of business owners amassing great wealth and spending wildly on luxuries than of athletes doing the same thing. How much are pro athletes paid? It is no surprise that the MLB has the highest average salary amongst its top players roughly $16.4 million per year considering it is the only league without a salary cap. I think there should be sports games for chicken, and other animals too. The notion of the owners and players splitting the pot no longer holds; the pot has turned into something closer to a bottomless vat, with both management and labor coming away with their bank accounts overflowing. Seal of Biliteracy Tests Allow Students to Test Their Knowledge of A Foreign Language, Student Artists Share Work in Annual Art Show, Top Music Ensembles Win Awards on Philadelphia Music Trip, Over a 1000 Library Books Remain Overdue in the High School. The real question is do professional sports players get overpaid? Its cyclical. We would not be in America without soldiers who died for us. Professional athletes are making too much money in a society where salaries and wages are traditionally based on the value of ones work. A lot of people assume that athletes spend all their money on clothing, cars, and wasteful stuff, but that cannot be said for all athletes. So, if people agree that athletes are overpaid, then they should stop creating such a high demand for sports. Not every professional athlete makes money like Kobe Bryant and Floyd Mayweather. Many families in America live paycheck to paycheck in order to take care of their families and meet their basic needs. In these industries the top employees are paid the most. There's no question that professional athletes are paid too much. Log in to hide ads. The Christian Science Monitor has expired. He could never play football again and instead had to live a more challenging life. Its not exactly a news flash that many elite pros and lots of not-so-elite ones earn more money in a year than the average American worker makes in a lifetime. In that landscape, the ability of sports to attract viewers across all demographic groups has become hugely valuable. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations. Audrey Whitfield is this year's Editor-in-Chief of The Wire. Athletes are role models.