Athletes Are Overpaid Research Paper

Why is it so important for athletes to get payed more than an average american gets payed? Athletes get paid more in their career in every sport around the world because they risk their lives training for us.

In today’s society many will argue whether or not professional athletes are overpaid. In the present time athletes are being paid phenomenally large amounts of money for their entertainment. It is my claim that all professional athletes are overpaid because they do not offer society an essential function that improves or enhances our world in comparison to other professionals such as medical doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Society does not value entertainment enough to warrant such high salaries such as those of many professional athletes. There is no reason that these athletes should demand these tremendous amounts of money. This is why you have to put into question their reasoning for demanding

Did you know that the highest type of doctor gets paid just over $500,000 and yet the average Cubs player made over 6 million dollars in 2012? That huge gap between the income of a doctor and a professional athlete shows that professional athletes are overpaid by a lot. The income of a professional athlete should be lowered and the income of important jobs should be raised higher than they are now. The way that professional athletes risk their health to potential injuries may affect their salary, but they should only get paid a normal amount of money and get more money when injured. Professional athletes are overpaid to just play sports, while our troops get paid less than them.

Do you think professional athletes are overpaid? You might think they earn more than what they are worth for playing half a year, but athletes have many things which contribute to their salary. Some of these things include their earnings from endorsements, ticket sales, performance, merchandise, their social contributions, and TV ratings. Although there are many factors that contribute to their salary, professional athletes may be overpaid because as a society, we contribute to their success. So, in the end, part of the athlete’s salary comes from the people who support the sports in the first place. These are just some of the reasons why athletes are paid so much money.

The passages present a discussion about arguments concerning whether or not professional athletes are overpaid. This is an important debate since professional sports represents a multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry. The two positions argue whether or not professional athletes should be paid the large yearly salaries they are paid. Both viewpoints have valid claims warranting consideration. For example, evidence suggests that people with far more important jobs are paid much less than professional athletes; in contrast, opposing evidence suggests that since professional athletes generally have short careers and must train very hard to build and maintain their skills, the higher salary is justified. While both sides of the issue have valid points, the viewpoint that professional athletes are not overpaid is the best-supported position, the position supported by the preponderance of the evidence cited in the passages. The strongest and best reasons supporting this position are that professional athletes must endure grueling and intensive training, they generally have short careers that often end in injury, and the amount that they are thought to be paid is often inflated. Accordingly, these reasons and opposing viewpoints will be discussed next.

In 2011, a report entitled “The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport” concluded in the idea that 85% of college athletes that are there on scholarship live below the poverty line. While in school, the players have no time for a job, and since they do not get paid, they cannot afford to live life having everything that they need, which doesn’t include anything they want to do on their free time. College athletes should be paid for playing, starting with the sports that bring in the most money, because the NCAA is a multi-billion-dollar organization and it is also what they deserve since they are sacrificing their body and time for the school.

Your body screams with every step. You gasp for the air you desperately long for. The urge to collapse to the ground, with your heart pounding in your ears. The pain drips from your chin, and drops onto the ground with a single, tiny splash. But you keep running through the bitter weather who is wearing you down. This is the daily warm-up every athlete has to power through to stay in their top-condition. In return, many professional athletes get paid millions of dollars. But, some people think that these athletes are being paid exorbitant amounts of money, whom they don’t deserve, because they believe high salaries should go to doctors and firefighters, who save the lives of others in their excruciating work. While others believe that athletes’ sacrifices to their health, and their dedicated time and energy to achieve their goals and dreams should be definitely be rewarded with a higher salary than most people. To look into the future, it is obvious that this issue’s outcome will open up revealing truths about an athlete’s salary. However, athletes are definitely not overpaid. If their salary was any lower, their hard work and bloodshed would go unnoticed. The risks of their overall health they experience daily would never be supported if those risks become a reality.

According to NCAA, “There are more than 460,000 NCAA student-athletes, and fewer than two percent will go pro in their sports.” [NCAA.org, “Probability of competing beyond high school,” (Sept. 2013)] This means that only nine thousand two hundred college student athletes make it to the pros after their college career is done. Honestly, that is a very small amount, considering college athletes do not get paid at all to play. Additionally, people assume most college athletes will someday make it to the pros, but that is not the case. Nowadays, outstanding talent is hard to come by.

Imagine a world in which you make about $15,000 to $20,000 dollars less than your favorite athletes, like Lebron James or Kobe Bryant. When you put it into perspective, it could be a pretty small gap when you see how much athletes in the U.S make today. The issue of extreme salaries for professional athletes is staggering and outrageous has been going for many years and continues to come up with arguments about how money should be spent not only by the public but by the government as well. On average the normal American citizen makes above $46,000 a year as of 2014 while in 2012 the average salary of all the national sports associations athletes was $2.6 million dollars a year and has most steadily risen in the past three years. This really brings to the forefront certain question like, what are our country’s values and what do we really stand for when teachers, doctors and civil service jobs are the lowest paid jobs when you compare them to

There are many people who would say that athletes are paid so much because they are putting their bodies at risk by playing that sport so they need money for possible medical damages/expenses. But then, there are soldiers that put their lives on the line to protect the rights that Americans have and it even gives the chance for those athletes to play and risk their health (Lesko). For example, the number of people in the National Football League who have died by playing the game or practicing is ten, in comparison, the number of people who have died serving our country is 1.3 million, but even though there is more risk serving our country than playing a game they are paid a large amount less. For example, someone that plays a sport can have injuries like concussions and some other injuries that risk their health but a soldier could potentially have PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) from the war they went into that could affect them immensely or the men/women that go over seas could even be shot and either become injured or could even die from this. Soldiers also have to leave their families behind for sometimes a year or more to serve their country which can put an immense amount of stress on them and their families, while an athlete can stay home and see their family daily (Miksic). In the end, the people who protect our country should be paid more than the people who protect a

Even though professional athletes get paid a lot of money, they have put in many hours of extremely hard work. Without the high pay in pro level sports, athletes may not want to work as hard when they are younger, because they have nothing to look forward to. However, many citizens are trying to fight against athletes getting paid a lot of money, an try to lower their pay. Pro athletes aren't paid too much because they are more prone to get injured, their careers do not last very long, and they have worked and payed money their whole lives to get were they are now.

Professional athletes deserve nothing that they have today. All they do is sit on their bums and watch mindless tv like real Americans. Most people earn a wage that is incomparable to the pro athlete’s wages.

One reason that athletes should not make so much money, is that other people who work harder than them make so much less money. If someone can get paid millions of dollars to throw a football or swing a bat, then people that save lives and make our government run smoother should make a whole lot more than their current salaries. I know that athletes can be inspirations to kids, but playing sports does not help people or benefit anything in this country. Why should athletes make more money than the people that make helpful impacts in the society? This leads me to my next point.

In thirteen years of golf, Tiger Woods has made over a billion dollars making him the highest paid athlete ever. He has been the highest paid athlete now for five years in a row. We all know that many people in the world watch him play every weekend and admire him, but is the amount of entertainment he provides really worth 128 million dollars a year? Tiger is only one of many professional athletes who are extremely overpaid. “People forget that sports is entertainment,” says Leonard Armato, a sports agent. Although professional athletes provide entertainment for millions of viewers around the world, they are overpaid because the millions of dollars that they make could be distributed more evenly throughout society and go to things of a