With the free-agent frenzy about to begin in Major League Baseball, the debate over the inflating salaries of professional athletes will once again resume.
The vast majority of fans believe that the salaries are out of control. They simply do not understand why owners continue to pay such large salaries and then pass the costs off to the fans in the form of higher ticket prices and $10 hot dogs at the concession stand. I’ve often heard fans say that it is ridiculous to pay people that much money for simply “”playing a game.””
I am of a different opinion. While I think that salaries have risen to high levels, I think that they are, for the most part, justified. I think that the athletes earn the money that they receive. I do, however, have one problem with high salaries: They make it virtually impossible for small-market teams to compete for big-name free agents.
Teams such as Oakland, San Diego and Florida simply do not have the market to generate $250 million over 10 years for a single player. This gives big-market teams like the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers the ability to spend the other teams out of contention. I am focusing on baseball because it is the only major sport without a salary cap.
For all of the beef that I have with teams overspending on free agents (namely, the Yankees), I still don’t think that fans have all that much to gripe about with the salaries that professional athletes take home.
My main argument is that these athletes are entertainers who are in incredible shape. They take home a percentage of the money raised by the owners for their performance. A top player takes home a larger amount of the profit that the team makes because he produces more and “”entertains”” the crowd more. I don’t think that it would be fair to pay the athletes only $100,000 per year and let the owners take home the rest. After all, the athletes are the ones who generate the profit with their performances.
As far as saying that paying the athletes this much for simply “”playing a game,”” I think that whoever said that has never seriously played a sport in his entire life. The fact of the matter is that these athletes are in phenomenal shape. Even the lard-ass linemen in football pound away for 30 to 40 minutes per game with small breaks. Chances are that an average joe off the street would not make it through a single game, let alone an entire season. In other sports, these men and women push themselves to the limit day in and day out for entire seasons, something that an average person couldn’t fathom. In addition to the shape that they are in, these athletes also handle the mental aspects of the game and perform at levels that we can only dream of. Athletes are truly special people who deserve to be paid special salaries.
When you look at it, athletes’ salaries can be put in perspective by looking at other industries. Top movie stars can make more than $20 million for a single movie that might take three months to shoot. As a result, movie ticket prices are now close to 10 bucks a seat. You don’t see people making nearly as much of a stink about that as they do about professional athletes.
In other words, stop your bitching about ticket prices and enjoy the top-notch athletes performing for you on the field.
Because I said so.