Should Athletes Get Paid as Much as They Do?

I created this project full of blog posts determined to discover why professional athletes get paid as much as they do, and whether or not it is fair. Throughout the process of making all of the posts, I have been extremely understanding of just how difficult it is to become a professional athlete. For that reason, it is reasonable for them to make a good portion of money. That being said, the amount in which they do get paid seems to almost be excessive. After doing several different types of research, the question “Should athletes get paid as much as they do?” led me to multiple different conclusions.

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The first step I took to answer the overall question was comparing the differences in salaries between sports. I compared how much the average NFL player makes compared to the average MLB player. I learned that managers aim to pay their athletes as much as possible so that they perform to the level of their expectations. The difference in sports plays a role in this controversy because the amount of athletes a sports roster can carry plays a critical position for how much each player gets paid. For example, a starting lineup in baseball requires 9 positions, whereas football requires 22 starters for offense and defense. Therefore, there will be more bench players in football to cover each position than there will be for baseball. As a result, the NFL has a lot more players that their managers need to pay compared to the MLB. This leads me to conclude that the size of a certain roster that a sports team requires can affect the salaries of the players.

Health for the athletes and fans is definitely the largest concern when it comes to sports events. Due to this, I wanted to see whether or not athletes choose to spend their money appropriately. Obviously, just because athletes get paid a lot of money right now doesn’t mean they were born in a stable family. I took this problem into consideration and specified on a specific athlete by the name of Michael Oher. Michael Oher was born into a abandoned  family, so he grew up on his own and found himself homeless. Eventually when Oher was 16, he was taken in by a family that later became his legal guardians. Oher was granted the opportunity to be involved in the community  with this new family, and did so by playing football. He excelled in football and amazingly became a high paid NFL player.  As a result of Oher’s improper and rather rough childhood, it led me to wonder whether or not he would be successful with wealth one day, or if he would choose to spend his money on bad things such as drugs and weapons. Fortunately, as of now Michael Oher has proved that going from rags to riches doesn’t automatically mean that the person will choose to spend their money in an inappropriate manner.

After researching just how much the average professional athlete makes, I began to compare it to the average americans salary. I was astonished to discover the differences in wealth and why. I noticed that athletes don’t only get paid because of their salaries, but they get paid even more from advertisements. After totalling the athlete's salary and advertisement money together, I began to wonder whether the money that athletes make was necessary. As an example, I combined the total salary and endorsement money of Tiger Woods and Lebron James to let viewers understand how much money these athletes make. Tiger Woods has a salary of $16.1 million a year and gets paid $65 million from endorsements. That is a total of $78.1 million. Lebron James has a salary of $17.8 million and gets paid $42 million from endorsements. That gives James a total $59.8 million. These statistics are shocking because it reveals how much athletes get paid from advertisements alone. This is only 2 of hundreds of more athletes that get paid a ridiculous amount of money. Is it really necessary for these athletes to get paid that much more than the average american?

In my last blog post, I compared the average american’s work hours against a professional athlete's average work hours. If a professional athlete got paid more due to working more hours than the average american, then it would only be fair to get a boost in money. After researching, I learned that the average american works about 47 hours a week, while a professional athlete trains on average for about 42 hours. In one article it explained that the hours from athletes were fairly lower because of the need to rest due to the “brutal” workouts. In my opinion, athletes get the better end of the deal because they are getting paid more, working less hours, and getting in shape while doing it all.

Whether or not athletes should get paid as much as they do is a common question asked in today’s society. Although more money may mean better performances, and even if rags to riches doesn’t lead to a negative future, after putting all of the facts and statistics together, I have concluded that I don’t believe that they should get paid as much as they do. The fact that athletes get paid as much as they do from endorsements/salaries and work less hours while getting in shape, led to me to believe that the amount in which they get paid is unnecessary.