Читать реферат по английскому: "Athletic Salaries Financiall Essay Research Paper" Страница 1

(Назад) (Cкачать работу)

Athletic Salaries: Financiall Essay, Research Paper

Athletic Salaries: Financially Outrageous or Economic Necessity

In Major League Baseball this year, the average player s salary was $1.9 million. (CNNSI.com) The average salary of a NBA (National Basketball Association) player was $2.6 million. (Staudohar 3) This is a serious problem considering that the average salary of an average American worker is around $700 a week, or $36,400 per year. The real question on everyone s mind is, what makes them so much more valuable than everyone else? To find the answers to this question and many more we must not only look at the type of work that is being done, but we must examine the lifestyle as well as the economic value of these althetic jobs.

Some people may say that these high salaries ensures the highest quality of gaming available. They say that by paying the players these large sums of money, we can have the greatest athletes in the world to watch and to represent our cities. According to CNNSI.com, this is very far from the truth. In the 2000-2001 NFL Season, the New York Giants won their division and went on to the Super Bowl. Their team salary was $57.3 million which was the 3rd lowest in the NFL. The Washington Redskins, who had the highest team salary in the league with $92.4 million, didn t even make the playoffs at the end of the season.

According to Dan Moorhead, head of organizational learning for Briish Telecom, the team s performance has a lot to do with the similarities of salaries between teammates. (Eidson 37) Players can be jealous if a teammates makes millions more than them, especially if they feel as if they are as good as, or better than the other player. This can cause conflicts between the players and can t interrupt the teamwork that is used by the team.

Peter Graham has a different view on why these high salaries are so important. Sports teams inject so much money back into the economies of the cities that they inhibit, that they are more than necessary for major cities. These teams (NFL) put out an average of $20 million to pay wages for their employees and to provide us with some of the greatest entertainment available today. (Graham 146) This money includes broadcasting as well as many donations to charities. But many of us are still wondering, is all of this worth the massive amounts of money that is paid to athletes each year?

In the NBA in 1998, the players had secured 57% of the $1.7 billion in revenues made that year. (Staudohar 4) The teams were actually losing money and this was a serious problem. This brought the entire league to a halt with a 202-day lockout. This disagreement between the players and the owners ended up costing owners and players millions of dollars. But in the end, there was good. The NBA now has many regulations in relation to salaries. Veteran players now earn more money and younger players are not eligible to earn quite as much money. Does it take a lockout of play and a stoppage of the regular season to settle this monetary problem though? This helps to keep the overall team salaries down and keep the owners out of debt, but it still doesn t stop certain players from earning massive amounts of money.

In Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez just signed a ten-year contract that totals $252 million. (CNNSI.com #2) This means that he will be making $25 million per year. He is now considered the greatest baseball player in the league, but is he worth paying out over a fourth of the teams payroll? The owner of the Texas Rangers seems to think so. He graciously upped his original offer of $250 million to $252 when asked to do so by Rodriguez. (CNNSI.com #1) His reason for doing this is to put fans in the seats. Not only did the Texas Rangers acquire an all star shortstop, but they also inherited a gold mine of possibilities. It is projected that Rangers merchandise sales will nearly quadruple with the addition of Rodriguez and the club has already begun selling out games for next years season. This is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the city of Texas.

These guys are getting paid more than any other person to go out every night and play a game. This is not the case for athletes. One reasonable explination for these high salaries can be attributed to the strange lifestyle led by athletes. Most of them spend more time on the road than at home and many of them are married with children. Football players can miss holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas if there happens to be a game on that day. This can seriously effect a family if they are constantly without a family member. There are also many, many hours of training and practice involved in being a proffesional athlete. They must endure hours of physical training on top of hours of mental training. The average athlete studies nearly four times as much as the average college student. This means that free time can be limited, with the exception of the off season. Package all of this up with the severe injuries that can take place and the athletes jobs don t sound quite so easy.

Many of the huge salaries that are seen in today s sporting world are based on trends set by other athletes. Many athletes strive to be the highest paid because with that status can go the status of the greatest athlete in the game. Kurt Warner, quarterback for the St. Louis Rams is in a bad situation as far as money goes. He led the Rams to their first ever Super Bowl victory and he wasn t even the starting quarterback in the beginning of the season. Last season, he was playing for the league minimum of $254,000 and he became the biggest quarterback in the league in that one year. Now Warner is stuck in a contract in which he will only make a feeble $400,000 per year until he is eligible to take offers from other teams. Warner wanted to be paid like the top-notch quarterback that he is, but league rules state

Похожие работы