Overpaid AthletesEssay Preview: Overpaid AthletesReport this essayOverpaid AthletesFloyd Mayweather, a professional boxer, recently topped the Forbes list of highest paid athletes for 2014. He has become only the second professional athlete to ever make over $100 million dollars in a single year. (Badenhausen) Situations such as this give reason to the debate that professional athletes are paid far more than they should be. Professional athletes do not deserve the amount of money they are paid because they are not good role models, many other professions deserve a similar salary, and some of them are not very good at their sport to begin with.
When we think of bad role models a few names come to mind, Lance Armstrong being one of them. Armstrong is perhaps most famous for his doping, a discovery that lost him all seven of his Tour de France championships. (“Lance Armstrong Verdict”) This used to be a man that parents wanted their kids to look up to because of his perseverance, determination, and courage through his fight with cancer, but this is no longer the case. Lance Armstrong, along with many other athletes, may have once been somebody to look up to, but have since lowered their standards and become anything but a role model. With this in mind, the reason why athletes are paid millions of dollars is lost.
Perhaps the most prominent reason for athletes being paid too much is the fact that there are many professions that deserve to be paid more than they are paid. For example a high school teacher in the US makes, on average, $57,770 each year. (“High School Teacher”) Many of these teachers have at least a Bachelor’s degree and perform one of the most important jobs in the whole country. On the other hand, less than half of all NFL players have any kind of college degree and don’t do anything that contributes to the well-being and success of future generations. Teachers educate and greatly contribute to the success of future American leaders. With this point of view, one might think that it would be right for them to swap salaries.
The Benefits to The Athletes: “Flexion”: Fitting the Players into the Basketball League gives us more flexibility. If the talent-based model is popular in the NBA, and if there are more of those in professional sports, we’ll see more players who are less fortunate because they have less time to prepare for a season and the players will have more time to practice and improve. This puts competition on the NBA’s end. But there is no guarantee that a certain degree of flexibility to pursue those goals will get you on the NBA roster. So let’s say one of those things happens to make you a good college player. As far as you can tell, that player will make the NBA roster because he has the luxury of playing in a program that is competitive, but with less time to prepare and the players have fewer time to practice. That’s not a bad thing. Also, the NBA Players Association has given all the other American professional basketball players an incentive not to leave the NBA to get a gig or a contract. The NBA Players Association also provides a few “guaranteed hours” for players who leave the league for additional reasons, including financial reasons that are not a guarantee of a job. A player can sign up at any time. It is only guaranteed hours if he receives an offer sheet. Some of these guarantees are limited to those who have been given an extension:
• All-American
• Drafted and developed
• No minimum salaries
• Contracts with clubs
• Salary limits
What Does Free Agency Mean for the NFL? As an American Football and NBA Player, you can expect the same pay growth for your players across the league if your players are not as fortunate in making the NBA roster as they are in college. If you believe that the NBA players are too far away to play in the NBA because they will soon leave the league, I recommend you read the entire NBA Players Association’s “Finance & Player Development Report: How Much Can You Expect to See” or the player projections for your favorite team at their website and see if there is anything out there which might prove beneficial to your prospects. But that’s not even enough. It’s more important for this to be a comprehensive report that is thorough and that helps you set up a fair shot of making the NBA as if your players were already there. And that’s precisely what I believe this report will do. Don’t get me wrong. I get what your league is all about, but what is the NBA doing that might be harder to accomplish than just building a basketball team? What is it that you believe the NBA needs to build? Should it be adding all those additional jobs to the NBA on scholarship for high school athletes? No, here is what would be the key component to the NBA Players Association’s “financial investment” strategy in the future. The
The Benefits to The Athletes: “Flexion”: Fitting the Players into the Basketball League gives us more flexibility. If the talent-based model is popular in the NBA, and if there are more of those in professional sports, we’ll see more players who are less fortunate because they have less time to prepare for a season and the players will have more time to practice and improve. This puts competition on the NBA’s end. But there is no guarantee that a certain degree of flexibility to pursue those goals will get you on the NBA roster. So let’s say one of those things happens to make you a good college player. As far as you can tell, that player will make the NBA roster because he has the luxury of playing in a program that is competitive, but with less time to prepare and the players have fewer time to practice. That’s not a bad thing. Also, the NBA Players Association has given all the other American professional basketball players an incentive not to leave the NBA to get a gig or a contract. The NBA Players Association also provides a few “guaranteed hours” for players who leave the league for additional reasons, including financial reasons that are not a guarantee of a job. A player can sign up at any time. It is only guaranteed hours if he receives an offer sheet. Some of these guarantees are limited to those who have been given an extension:
• All-American
• Drafted and developed
• No minimum salaries
• Contracts with clubs
• Salary limits
What Does Free Agency Mean for the NFL? As an American Football and NBA Player, you can expect the same pay growth for your players across the league if your players are not as fortunate in making the NBA roster as they are in college. If you believe that the NBA players are too far away to play in the NBA because they will soon leave the league, I recommend you read the entire NBA Players Association’s “Finance & Player Development Report: How Much Can You Expect to See” or the player projections for your favorite team at their website and see if there is anything out there which might prove beneficial to your prospects. But that’s not even enough. It’s more important for this to be a comprehensive report that is thorough and that helps you set up a fair shot of making the NBA as if your players were already there. And that’s precisely what I believe this report will do. Don’t get me wrong. I get what your league is all about, but what is the NBA doing that might be harder to accomplish than just building a basketball team? What is it that you believe the NBA needs to build? Should it be adding all those additional jobs to the NBA on scholarship for high school athletes? No, here is what would be the key component to the NBA Players Association’s “financial investment” strategy in the future. The
Floyd Mayweather, as mentioned before, is the highest paid athlete, but how long is he actually in the ring? In 2014, Mayweather was only in the ring for a total of seventy-two minutes! (Badenhausen) This means that he makes roughly one and one half million dollars every minute he spends in the ring. Compare that to the average teacher making approximately $30 per hour, which doesn’t even include the time the spend after class making lesson plans and grading papers, and it is evident that there is no reason for this huge difference. (Lepi) Yes, Mayweather is undefeated, and yes over half of his wins are by knock out, but does that really make him worth $1.5 million a minute?
Generally when we thing of professional athletes we think of them as the best but that may not always be the case. For example, in the graph above you can see that one name really pops out at you for being far overpaid for his lack of performance,