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Should Professional Athletes Be Paid?

Decent Essays

$29 million, to do half the work that someone with the same occupation as you. Doing half the work should probably mean half the normal pay, but it 's not. Being paid $29 million for any type of work should probably involve running the most prestigious company in the world, or being the first to find the cure for cancer. Not even close. Imagine being paid $29 million to play baseball, and not even the whole season. Welcome to the life of Alex Rodriguez. Alex Rodriguez 's salary in 2013 was $4 million more than the whole Houston Astros roster, making him the highest paid baseball player for the 13th consecutive season (Blum). Although the talent of professional athlete or professional teams should be rewarded through their salaries, there …show more content…

Individual athletes in any major sport can be paid without actually playing, just because they are their salaries based on the contingencies of the contract. Currently in the NBA, there are no restrictions on player contracts, so players can be paid a large amount, even if they do not perform well, or don 't play. There is no cap on the current salary, and no restrictions on the amounts of a players contract (Beck). Meaning, if an NBA player signs a 10 year contract that is designed to pay him increasingly each season, then the organization is legally obligated to abide by the contract, regardless of the players performance on the court.
The lack of attention to absurd athlete contracts needs to change now, because it brings more competition to sports. It helps small market teams to be able to compete with the bigger name teams if there is a cap placed. This will make it more interesting for the rest of the league and its fans. It is shown that price and win percentage do have a correlation. If there was a cap, all teams would have a set range of pricing, and their win percentages would have less spread, making it very competitive and interesting to watch. In sports like soccer, without a cap, the wealthiest teams will have the power to buy the best players from around the world, and thus have the best team. This will lead to a dominance of a few teams in the whole league. With such an emphasis on the amount of money a

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