Inefficiencies In Sports

Anyone who has been involved in an organized sport, whether it is backyard football or a high school sports team, knows that these sports all have organizations that are responsible for setting rules, determining conditions of play, and penalizing individuals who infringe the rules. Some of the organizations like the National Football league and the MLB are familiar to most people, the rules they follow are not generally understood by anyone who is not closely associated with the sport. Most fans and sport critics assume that what is happening inside these organizations are of little concern to them. However, this is not the case. In the MLB, the New York Yankees spend an excessive amount of money every year to obtain big name players. A

Professional sports are often perceived as one of the last true bastions of capitalism, where player salaries are constrained only by what the market will bear. Since the 1990’s, however, [professional] sports leagues have grown increasingly concerned over the increase in player salaries, not only in terms of the absolute cost required to field a competitive team, but also in terms of parity, or the extent to which teams in a league are fairly evenly matched (Cushman 1).

Athletes in professional sports get paid a lot of money to play for famous teams. Because they want more money, they are motivated to play better. When they do play better, they get more money. For example, rookies, players that are new to the game, aren’t paid much. However, they want more money to support their life, so they practice more and train to be much more skilled. Coaches then realize they will soon want more money as the years go by. Athletes practice with their team every week, and do the drills that the coaches pick to do. If players don't get better from this, they need to practice on their own time. “It's up to the execution from the athletes” (Neiburg). This shows that athletes must be self motivated. Most of them are, when they aren’t paid much. Most veteran athletes that are already skilled have a high payroll - because of salary caps. Since it is usually cap prohibitive to release a player that gets a significant signing bonus with this model, some teams are willing to include roster bonuses due in the first couple of days of the second contract year (Corry). This illustrates that salary caps don’t allow players to be released right away. So, the player will get more practice with the team, and have more chances after a bad season or two. Even if a player eventually does get released, they wouldn’t be happy, but they’d be self motivated to practice as much as they can to get back on a team. Critics of this idea say that the only way players got into a professional sports league is because they are skilled, and already practiced a lot. Teams are also only looking for skilled players in certain positions they need. However, the reason teams need new players in those positions is because the players that are already in those positions have weaknesses. Since there isn't any signing bonus proration, teams have more cap

Jayson Stark, ESPN columnist, presents an interesting argument of the downfall of baseball after free agency. He uses sarcasm and slight humor to introduce the reader to the topic of free agency and uses the argument style of comparison and contrast to predict what today might have held had there been no free agency. But within his column, player agent Tom Reich states, “The people who criticize free agency to easily today don’t realize how bad baseball was twenty-five years ago” (Stark). It is Stark who realizes that the talent of the game has improved, but the overall passion in each player may have decreased.

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.

Professional baseball players work tirelessly to perfect their craft and deserve to be paid adequately. Another reason the MLBPA chooses to keep a free labor market is that with a more open labor market, team revenues can steadily increase and lead to increased player salaries. A negative side effect of this, however, is that teams can receive and use supplementary party revenues, which can help outbid competitors for top-tier free agents, and raise the cost of a player beyond the means of teams with fewer or no supplementary revenues (Zimbalist 24). Under this circumstance, which is currently the present state of MLB, a salary cap may become a sensible solution. On the other hand, if a salary cap system was in place, teams might be tempted to cheat by underreporting total revenues.

Labor relations did not play a dominant role in professional sports until the early 1970’s. Prior to unions and collective bargaining, professional athletes were treated like “privileged peons.” Today sport is more career and business than avocation and pastime. Today professional players pursue their playing careers as businesses. And agents

At the beginning of the twentieth century and the outset of the professional sports industry the existence of underpaid players at the premier level of athletics was a legitimate problem. It was this problem that played a role in the fixing of the

Sports are part of the everyday life of many people across the world, and in the United States sports are even more present in its society's life due to the fact that there are four major sports in the country. But should the professional athletes from these sports earn salaries as high as ten or twentieth times more than the national average wage? The answer should be NO. Professional athletes must be well remunerated but can not be overpaid when there are many issues around the world that can be solved with money. At this present age, professional athletes do not play for the love of the sport, and what they really care is what is going to be the amount of money in their contracts. The fans who support their teams have the majority of guilt in the high salaries of these athletes. Any team or franchise of any sport will not be able pay excessive salaries to their players if they do not sell jerseys, tickets, packages trip, accessories related to players, and games package on TV cables. The national government should intervene in the sports federation's policies and set a salary cap that do not diverges from its population reality.

In the article, “The Economics of Major League Baseball Free Agency: Start It Earlier To Achieve Fiscal Sanity” (2014), Reuter, T. explains why signing athletes to mega-contracts is an albatross waiting to happen and other cautionary tales relating to the baseball free agent market. Reuter, asserts that the current Major League Baseball (MLB) labor agreement is out of date and is in need of a major overhaul. His viewpoint on this issue is that baseball is a young man’s game and it would be smart for Major League Baseball to acknowledge that fact and start free agency earlier in their careers.

Young athlete’s main goal to attain is to become a professional athlete. Many want to become a professional athlete due to the money, others for the love of the particular sport that they are interested in. There is a downside in becoming a professional athlete, that many young players are not aware of. This downside is that professional athletes’ go broke faster than they are drafted into the leagues. Many professional athletes such as NBA and NFL players go broke due to career duration, overspending, family issues, and lack of financial knowledge.

For teams with smaller salary caps, it was difficult to compete with the most prestigious organizations which had more to offer the top caliber player. This made acquiring top players extremely difficult for the smaller teams, however a former player turned executive implement a method that leveled the playing field. The former player introduced a method changing the

In this website article written by “The Doctor Chris Mueller”, a featured columnist from Bleacher Report, he explores both sides when it comes to the question “Are athletes overpaid?” and talks about the

Imagine a darkened evening in the spring the lights are slowly warming up to illuminate the field in which the cleats of the great will graze the grass and scuff up the freshly dragged dirt. The crowd is feeling anxiety to know if the umpire is going to call the pitch a ball or a strike. This is in the mind of every person that comes out to support their local major league baseball team. In recent decades the sport of baseball has become criticized for the amount of money that the owners pay their players for their services. The question On the minds of not only the general public, but to the owners and the fans is the salary paid to the players. Major League baseball players are paid too much.

Major League Baseball is known as America’s favorite pastime, and MLB teams spend an extensive amount of money in the excess of a billion dollars with the ultimate goal to win the World Series. This learning team’s focus throughout this descriptive statistics paper is the MLB players’ performances, salaries, salary caps, and winning percentages. Though salaries will by no means be a trade for wins, the goal is to use the less experienced players and pay them a lower salary. Research has been done on whether or not player’s salaries and wins are connected.