Essay on Pro Salary Cap

The New York Yankees were a very popular baseball team in the 1960s because of their ability to go far and win the world series 2 times in the 1960’s. In 1962 The Yankees went to the world series and played at Yankee Stadium(britannica.com). In the World Series, they ended up defeating the San Francisco Giants in game 7 so the Yankees could take the gold trophy(Britannica.com).Game 7 in the world series means that the two teams playing had an equal skill level.Each team won 3 games,but in the last game the Yankees took the gold by learning from their mistakes. In 1961 the

Salary caps are a very important tool used in professional sports. All 4 major professional sports leagues in the United States have a salary cap installed into their collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players. Those four major sports are, the NFL, the NBA, the MLB and the NHL. A salary cap is defined as s an agreement or rule that places a limit on the amount of money that a team can spend on players' salaries. It can be as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster. It is basically put in place to help the small market teams stay competitive. It is meant so the wealthy teams, also called big market teams, does not always stay dominant by signing the best players to very big contracts. Salary caps are

Pro athletes over the world are paid millions of dollars to play a sport, while people like doctors or policemen are risking their lives everyday are not even close to these athletes. I feel that pro athletes shouldn't be making that much money because of the fact they aren't really worth millions of dollars more than the rest of us. Athletes do deserve to make a living. They inspire and entertain us and they work hard. But, there are plenty of people out there who have hazardous and difficult jobs, but no one's handing them a colossal sum of money. Sure, we love to watch them for entertainment, but the sports they are playing are unimportant or our community because they aren't helping us in anyway.

There are five major sports leagues in the United States; Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the National Basketball Association (which has what is known as a “soft salary cap), the National Football League, and the National Hockey League. Of these five, only baseball lacks what is known as a salary cap. A salary cap is the upper limit of the combined salaries for a team’s players. In the other four sports I mentioned, having to work within the boundaries of a salary cap is a balancing act, to gain an advantage at one position requires you to be at a disadvantage at another position. For example, to have a top tier quarterback in the NFL like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers and the large salary they command, a team might lack the funds to sign a top tier linebacker or cornerback. With Major League Baseball lacking a salary cap, this balancing act vanishes and teams could sign anyone and everyone they wished. This causes a competitive imbalance that is hurting the sport. Too often we see the same teams making the playoffs and winning championships like the San

He states, "This is not about stupidity, it is about what is fair in baseball, and what is not. It is about the overall appeal of the national pastime. It is about caring, interest, and most of all, competition. Right now, there is very little of any of these components outside of the 212 area code." Most importantly, he explains why baseball needs a salary cap by saying "it is the only way to put constraints on what the Yankees are doing and to return the sport to the interesting and suspenseful form of sporting entertainment it once used to be." The Yankees are at an unfair advantage all across the league, and nobody, not Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, or perhaps even Los Angeles, can acquire talent the way they can. The only way to prevent them from doing so is to put a cap on how much they can pay their entire team.

Twenty-five million dollars made per year. Over one hundred fifty-four thousand dollars made per game. Over forty-seven thousand dollars earned per at bat. Sounds a little ridiculous, does it not? That is what current Texas Ranger shortstop Alex Rodriguez earns to play the game of baseball (azcentral.com). Baseball is a game that children have been playing in schoolyards and fields for the past one hundred years. It may not be a game anymore. On the Major League level it has become a business. This is where the problem starts.

There were many reasons the scandal that was the 1919 World Series happened, none more important, and maybe less mentioned than the greed of Charles Comiskey, the teams owner. This club may have been the best ever assembled, but it may have also been the most underpaid. No incident explains this any better than the salary of Eddie Cicotte, Eddie had won 28 games in 1917, the war had harmed 1918, but Eddie was back for 1919, but Eddie was only paid $6,000 for the 1919 season, many pitcher in the league with much less talent was paid more than twice that amount. Eddie wasn't the only one, as a whole Comiskey was paying a much smaller salary to his players than any other team would have to pay for the same talent. But for Comiskey it was all about the money.

Baseball han’t always been an economic powerhouse. By the 1869, the first professional baseball team was created. The Cincinnati Red Stocking were the first all-professional team. Before the Red Stocking, the game of baseball was an amateur sport. Players was still being paid under the table even though the game was an amateur sport. Players started to leave their

Every year, it becomes more obvious that many sports in America have problems. For years, Hockey has been criticized for its excessive violence. The National Football League has also been scrutinized for this reason as well as the fact that many of the top players have constantly been in trouble with the law. Major League Baseball is no different. The situation with baseball is more complicated, and is not only ruining the game itself, but also drawing millions of fans away from the sport. The biggest problem is with the high salaries paid to athletes. These salaries are taking the competitiveness out of several sports, especially baseball, where there is no salary cap. Action must be taken

Salaries in Baseball are skyrocketing every year. Why would a salary cap be needed? It would be needed to help keep ticket prices down, and help make for a more even level of competition for all of the teams. A salary cap is needed to keep baseball thriving in the future, to keep the game exciting and enjoyable to watch for every fan.

Salary Cap will also affect motivation of the players if they do not get what satisfy them. They will be majorly playing towards maximizing their wealth rather than wining and keeping the spirit of the game alive.

Michael Vick, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, was convicted of operating a massive dog fighting ring and was sentenced to 23 months in jail in 2007.

Both Dave Zirin in "The Shame of the NCAA" and Tim Ajmani in "Compensation for College Athletes" would agree that student athletes are being taken advantage of. In Zirin's piece, he speaks about how this treatment towards these students is a civil rights issue. These students are being overworked on the field, some may consider playing a sport in college is more than a full-time job, and aren't getting form of payment or protection. These corporations and universities are “enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men whose status… deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution"(Zirin 204), the NCAA justifies its purpose with two principals, amateurism and student athletes. Since these athletes are students and playing amateur games, they don’t have to be compensated. The NCAA also justifies the fact that students don’t get paid by giving them free room and board but Ajmani makes a point that paying students would provide more of a motive for them to stay in school and complete their degree. In Ajmani's

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

If I could pay someone $25 million a year to get him/her on my team and generate $30 million, why not hire that player? The salary cap for the NFL is $102.5 million per team, and we currently have 32 teams, so we the public are paying 3.28 billion to those teams. Currently America is in a 11 trillion dollar debt, if athletes could get paid $150,000/year then we could save 1 billion dollars a year. The monetary worth of athletes exceeds the value that any one individual is actually worth. League officials should be using salary caps, negotiations, and legal tactics. Athletes' salaries are in increasing problem for the economy of our modern world. Although the sports have their own equal distributions, the overwhelming salaries of the leagues' highest paid players have made the average of salaries higher and higher each year.