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Essay on Athletes: Playing for Pay

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Should professional athletes earn millions of dollars for playing a game? Athletes should not be making millions and millions of dollars while more important jobs earn significantly less. There are doctors who save lives daily and they do not even make a tenth of what some athletes make. It is crazy to believe that someone is really worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and all they have to do is play a sport; a sport that millions of people would play for free if given the chance. Where does all of this money come from to pay these superstar athletes? It comes from the fans. The same fans that cry when their team loses, celebrates when they win and pay six dollars for a beer and seven dollars for a deluxe hot dog at their team’s game. …show more content…

Drew Brees earns $410,000 per touchdown, which is almost a third of what an American worker makes over their lifetime (Doyle). A lot of the time, an athlete will say “it’s not about the money”. If it is not about the money, then why do players threaten to skip training camp or demand to be traded because they do not like their contract? Ty Law was once quoted saying he wanted more than the seven million he was guaranteed because he “has to eat” (Lefebrve). It is crazy to think that someone could be so selfish to old out of their contract because they need more than seven million dollars to eat. The average physician makes roughly $191,000 a year, which is a tenth of what a professional athlete makes for playing a game ("Physician: Salary"). A doctor also has to go to college for four years, then turn around and go to medical school and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, whereas to go to the NBA a player only needs one year of college experience. Doctors save lives daily and they make a considerable amount less than what a pro athlete makes. Doctors are considerably underpaid for the value of work that they put in compared to athletes. A surgeon or doctor who repairs a brain, heart, or limbs, and saves people’s lives every day, doesn't even get close to that amount of money. What is ironic, is that many of the times a doctor will be helping an athlete rehab so that they can get back on the field or court and continue to get paid

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