Professional Athletes Salaries: Are They Paid Too Much?

Professional Athletes Salaries: Are they paid too much?

What should athletes deserve to be paid? Many players have risen to stardom by becoming a professional athlete. Athletes have come from many different backgrounds; some from wealthy and some from poverty raised backgrounds. Salaries are continuing to rise, and money doesn't seem to be an issue. Athletes are getting what they want from the owners by negotiating through their agents. Athletes' salaries aren't just from their owners, but they come from other sources also. Athletes get paid an enormously high salary for the work they do. Really all they do is entertain us. We should consider the value of their work and pay them accordingly. They do not deserve the extreme amount they get paid and something should be done about it.

Wouldn't it be great to make twenty million dollars a year and an additional ninety million dollars in endorsements simply to play a game that you are supposed to love to play? Lebron James, who has no college degree and hasn't worked a day in his life, along with many other professional athletes thinks so. Lebron makes close to 100 million a year and probably will soon make much more. Yes, he is one of the best basketball players in the world, but paying somebody that much money for a game is ridiculous. All he had to do was just put a little round ball in a hoop. He didn't save nobody's life or make something that would benefit society. He entertained us for eighty two games and now has more money than he can spend.

In today's society, one is supposed to be paid more if their job is more economically important. Doctors make more than factory workers; teachers make more than people who work at Wendy's and so on. Still, professional athletes make more than what a teacher makes. Some professional athletes will make more money in one year than a teacher will make if he/she teaches all of their life. Is entertaining people more important than teaching them? The future of our society relies on the education of its youth and still teachers are paid less than these professional athletes. Even President Bush gets paid less than what most professional athletes are making. Here is a guy who makes decisions that affects everybody in our society everyday and we are saying entertainment is more important because we pay these athletes more. These games are supposed to be played for fun, not for millions of dollars.

Athletes do work hard for their money. Some people say professional athletes get paid for doing little work, but this is untrue. Professional athletes work year round to become better. They also attend miniature camps and their seasonal training camps. These athletes work year round to earn their high salaries. In fact they probably work as hard as any other profession out there. Making it into the pros isn't an easy thing to do. It takes a tremendous number of hours of hard work and dedication every day to earn a job in professional sports. The odds of becoming a doctor or a teacher are much better than somebody becoming a professional athlete, so shouldn't a professional athlete be paid more?

Looking at the other of the issue you can see that they might not be getting paid too much. Many other athletes provide for their immediate and extended families. Many athletes raise and donate money to charity. Many of these athletes are not careful with their money. They help our economy by spending unnecessary amounts of money. The public needs to realize that without the sky-high spending, the economy would not function as well as it does now.

We blame owners for giving players all this money but isn't it the fan's fault these athletes make the money they do? They are the ones who pay a hundred dollars for a ticket, a couple hundred dollars for a jersey and twenty dollars for a hat. They buy the shoes their favorite athlete wears and all kinds of other merchandise. If the public didn't help by buying these items, the money to pay these athletes the huge amounts wouldn't be there. In turn, their salaries would decrease.

Another issue is these athletes need this money to survive. This is all they know how to do. A lot of professional athletes have no college degree to fall back on, so they need all of this money. They have to pay for there five houses they own, their thirty cars they have, and all the other stuff they want to buy. Athletes entertain us; they disserve all of this money don't they? They have worked hard playing the game they are supposed to love to play and disserve this money.

Money has ruined professional sports. Athletes are now just playing for money and not for the love of the game. Every year there are strikes and lockouts because the athletes think they are not getting paid enough money. They want twenty million dollars instead of ten million. Last year Latrell Sprewell said he needs more money because he had to feed his family. He was already making close to five million dollars a year. If you can not feed your family with five million dollars a year