Persuasive Essay

Evan Mora

1/20/11

Persuasive Essay 3/4

Overpaying Professional Athletes

Mihir Bhagat of the Bleacher Report said, “Wouldn't it be great to make at least a million dollars a year

simply to play a game?” (www.bleacherreport.com)We are all good at some sport, right? So, why don’t we get paid millions of dollars to do what we love? Sports players all across the nation are getting paid, in a year, more than the average American makes in a lifetime. We could persuade team commissioners to take more control over the salary cap of sports players, and boycott the teams by not buying any tickets so the players can’t get paid as much. Do superstars who were gifted with the ability to play a sport deserve all of this money?

Statistics prove that most professional athletes are grossly overpaid. “From June 2008 to June 2009, the highest paid professional athlete, Tiger Woods, made $110 million according to Forbes. Also on their list, at number two, was Kobe Bryant making $45 million, and Michael Jordan with the same amount,” said Chris of the Face off, a Canadian sports publication. (www.chris-thefaceoff.blogspot.com) Many sports players across the nation are making unrealistic amounts of money and spending it on unreasonable items. Overpaying our sports athletes is a major conflict in our nation. What could a young kid do with all of that money? If we didn’t pay our sports athletes so much, the government could be using that money to help revive our economy. As our economy is going down the drain, we are paying millions of dollars to young gifted athletes to play a game that they like doing. There are people in the world who are doing many more important things for our country for much less pay. “What about the rest of us? Doctors, lawyers, CEOs. We can all end up making some good money. If we graduate in the top of our class and dedicate 60 or 80 hour weeks to our job, we can make a few hundred thousand dollars per year,” says Travis Ristig, avid sports fan. (http://www.convivium.co.za) This problem exists among us because if you were to walk into the average home, the television would probably be on a sports channel. If more people watch sports and go to the games, the more the players are going to get paid.

With this situation lingering among our nation, we could solve this problem by having the commissioners of all sports come together and put a low salary cap on all of the players’ salaries. “Pro athletes make astronomical salaries sometimes worth as much as millions of dollars, or as little as hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Matt Gilmartin, senior analyst of the Bleacher Report. (www.bleacherreport.com) Having the commissioners lower the salary cap for players would make it so that players would get paid on their performance in the games. If players get a flat pay for just being on the team for a certain amount of years, they don’t have to try hard for either their salary or their performance; they may just show up and “hang around”. Making it so that players get paid for doing well in the games, it ensures for better plays and more interesting match ups. As an example, being a commission sales person, you can only get paid if you sell your product. Why can’t sports be the same? Only get paid well if you do well in that particular game, or that week. “How much money does the average person really need to be able to eat three times a day, have a roof over their head, send their children to school and have a car?” said Matt Lefebvre writer for the Quinnipiac Chronicle. (http://www.quchronicle.com/) Some people might argue that if YOU were a professional athlete, you would want to be paid millions of dollars to play a game. However, do you really need millions of dollars? You should be caring more about supporting your fans and putting on a good show for them than making millions of dollars a year.

Another way to solve this issue is to boycott sports teams. Samuel Smith from the Associated Content with Yahoo stated, “With our money, we have stated that we would rather continue watching sports than let it fade into extinction.” (www.associatedcontent.com) If somehow there could be an advertised, set date where nobody buys a ticket to any sporting event, all of the sports teams would be out of luck on that days’ sales. This event would cause a major loss in profit for all of the sports teams across the country. In hopes of finding the attention of the owners of teams, the loss of millions could hopefully end up dropping the prices of tickets and product. You shouldn’t be paying your players so much if the average family can’t even afford to attend the game that day. “How is it possible that athletes make so much money even in the toughest of economic times? How can they make millions and millions for easy jobs while we all toil away?” said Travis Ristig of You Great Finance. (http://www.flazgames.com) Others may think that it would be impossible to organize a day like this to get an outcome this great. Why not attempt it in hopes to get a good result. If you try and fail, can’t you try again? Making this day happen could be a turning point in athletes’ salaries forever.

Overpaying sports athletes has been a big debate in the United States for some time. If we could figure out how to put on a nationwide event where no one buys a ticket for any sport’s game, owners of teams would lose millions of dollars in a day. If they lose all of that money, they won’t be able to afford to pay
their players with such high salaries. In an event like this, owners should realize that there is a problem with their team. With this big of a loss, they would have to start lowering their prices on product, and
stop paying their athletes so much. If we don’t stop this issue soon, it could spiral out of our control.