The topic I chose for my essay is overpaid professional athletes. I chose this topic because I think athletes are getting paid way too much money. Athletes get paid way too much for what they contribute to society. They contribute very little compared to other careers that give so much to society but make very little salaries. The professional athletes that people look up too are most of the time bad role models and the ones who are the real heros don’t get noticed at all. They entertain and are fun to watch but don 't affect our society in any big way. Other careers like doctors who save lives everyday don 't make anything compared to the highest paid athletes. Teachers help build our future scientist …show more content…
and doctors but get paid small salaries. Firefighters,teachers and police officers also are very underpaid for their services.
There are many different careers that deserve to get paid high salaries. A group of careers that deserve higher salaries than athletes are teachers, police officers and firefighters. They don’t make nearly enough for what they contribute to society. Police officers are always out there keeping us safe and putting their lives on the line for strangers they don’t even know. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics a police officers average salary is around 50,000 a year. According to ESPN in the major league of baseball the average salary is around 3.2 million dollars. It really doesn 't make any sense how hitting a ball and running around a field can make more than a police officer who is keeping our streets safe. Another career that deserve it are firefighter.They are a lot like police officers and come whenever we need them weather our house is on fire or someone is stuck somewhere and can’t get out. They will go into a burning house without thinking about it to save someones life. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics the highest you can get paid as a firefighter is a little more than 160,000 depending on your resume. According to Bhagat, in soccer the highest paid player in 2012 was David Beckham with 46 million dollars. Sammy Said points out that Roger Federer is one of the highest paid professional athletes out there. He makes 52 million a year to play tennis. Said also points out that Lebron James a professional basketball player earned 53 million in 2012. This is an outrageous amount of money. This is only for one year people don’t even come close to millions in their lifetime. Its hard to believe that kicking a soccer ball around for 90 minutes is more important than saving a persons life. Firefighters and police officers don’t know if they 're going to come back to their families. They deserve more than what they get, they don’t deserve the small salaries they are getting for what they are doing for us. Our society has their priorities mixed up if they think playing sports deserves more money than saving lives.
Teachers help children with their social, practical, and intellectual skills that they need to be members of society. Teachers help build the future leaders of this country. Teaching is the most important profession in the world. Teachers give kids the knowledge and values they need to prepare themselves for college and their future careers. This important career doesn’t get the salary it deserves. The average salary for an elementary teacher is around 50,000 dollars a year. For someone who is preparing children to be active members of society they are not getting what they deserve. Every year rookies get paid huge amounts of money and most of them spend a lot of time sitting and watching. Athletes work only a few months out of the year playing a limited number of games. For example NFL football players some of the highest paid professional athletes only play sixteen regular season games and a maximum of four postseason games giving them a total of 24 games on the season. Some athletes don 't live up to expectations but still get a lot of money because there was a certain amount of money guaranteed in their contract. For example Bhagat points out that Jamarcus Russel was the number one draft pick in the 2007 NFL draft for the Oakland raiders. He signed a contract for 68 million with 31 million guaranteed. Russel was supposed to be this team 's savior but instead was a huge bust and didn’t live up to expectations. He still got 31 million out of the deal because he was guaranteed that amount. It was a huge amount of money basically thrown away and in return getting nothing from this football player. According to ESPN, Albert Pujols signed with the Anaheim Angels for over 240 million dollars. The Angels haven’t had a winning record with him. It 's huge gamble for something you 're not sure is going to have results. Surgeons make almost 300,000 a year and deserve it ( see graph in appendix).
They save lives for a living. They are kind of like a superhero. People don 't really look up to them because they aren’t on tv entertaining them. Children don’t look up to people like surgeons because they 're not scoring an incredible goal or running 100 yards for a touchdown. Kid look up to superstars like Lance Armstrong for example he was an inspiration to people. People from around the world looked up to him for what he had accomplished and all the adversity he went through. He tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. He is paid so much and sets such a bad example for children that look up to him. He is basically saying cheat and lie to reach your goals. Floyd Mayweather a professional boxer has went to jail twice and hasn’t learned his lesson because he thinks he can do whatever he wants. He spends a lot of his money gambling on different sport games doesn 't care because he has more coming in. According to Dan Rafael the last fight he had he earned 32 million dollars just for that one fight. People like that don 't appreciate what they have because they can get anything they want. Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer out there he has unlimited amounts of money. He has kids and had a wife to go with that money. He had everything you could ever want but for him it wasn’t enough. Woods had to spend some of that money on girls having many different affairs with different girls while he was married. Money makes people do stupid things like what Tiger did. Michael Vick was one of the highest paid football players in the National Football League. He was the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons. The leader of his team and an inspiration to kids watching him on the television. Vick was caught in a huge scandal involving dog fights. He went to jail because of the dog fights and lost everything. What was the need to do dog fights? He had too much money and was bored so he did
something that could entertain him. He knew it was illegal but didn’t care. Athletes get so much money that they feel invincible. They start to think they can do anything they want and not have to pay for anything they do. When you have so much money you don’t know what to spend it on so athletes choose the wrong things like gambling, girls and drugs to improve your performance. They earn money for being violent and its a bad example for other young athletes. Athletes can have their off days and be forgiven because they have a lot more chances to make up for it. If they score a touchdown or score a goal in the next game they are forgiven it does not affect what they are going to be paid. However if a doctor makes a mistake during surgery, they will still be paid but they can be sued. When a professional athlete does not have a good game their salary is not affected in any way, shape, or form. Doctors are under more pressure than athletes to perform better because more is at stake for them. If they don’t do it right they could take someones life. I understand there is pressure in sports to perform especially when you 're fighting for a championship. You can’t compare that to the pressure of saving a life. There are those people who think athletes deserve the money because they worked hard to become a professional. They don’t get all their money from just playing their sport. They also get money from big sponsors like nike or adidas. According to Bahgat, Tiger woods signed a huge deal with nike for around 100 million dollars over five years. So it’s not just the club that they play but the sponsors. I would say that they deserve enough money to be comfortable but not more than they will use in their lifetime. Pro athletes grow up putting everything they have into their sport. They sacrifice things like friends, family and school to achieve their dreams. Even college sports eat up the whole week of an athlete. They balance school, sports and family and so much more. Their whole lives they work for a dream that only a few amount of people get to achieve. There are so many people around the country trying to compete for the same spot that they play. If we would 've put half the effort professional athletes put into their sport maybe would be successful too.The life of an athlete is difficult. We only see the outside we don 't know what their life is like we only assume.The difficulty of developing the skills needed to be a professional, staying injury free until they can show those skills at the Pro level and maintaining the skills for a reasonable number of years is so hard that the salaries sometimes make a little more sense. Another thing is that we help athletes get those big salaries by going to their games, buying their jerseys. If nobody went to their games and bought tickets there wouldn 't be high salaries. Going to a Boston baseball game is not that affordable for the middle class family. They have made it so that these games are so expensive and mostly affordable for the upper-class to attend. When you watch a basketball game you always see celebrities at the bottom next to all the action. According to Brian Warner a courtside ticket for an nba game is around 2,500 dollars and in playoffs way more. Boxing front seat tickets cost way more money depending on how good the fight is. This why so many people just watch it on pay per view because mostly celebrities or upper class people go and watch those kinds of fights. In boxing you always see celebrities near the action because its so expensive middle class can 't afford that. This is why athletes get paid so much because we have made it like that. Its crazy to think people pay for tickets that cost that much just to watch people run around for a couple of hours. It is our partially our fault for paying what they want just to see a game. Not all athletes get paid really high salaries. Some only make as much as a police officer or firefighters. But even though they get paid the same it 's easier being an athlete than a police officer. The high paid athletes give money back to charity and foster homes sometimes so there are some who use their money for good things. Some athletes get injured and never play again end up having to work a job that doesn 't pay a lot. They do risk a lot for a dream that might become a nightmare in the end. There are some athletes that do good things but there are more athletes that spend their money on girls, drugs and partying. If they didn 't have as much money I think they would appreciate it more and not waste it on stupid things. The way they get paid is wrong and it shouldn 't be that way because they don 't deserve that much money. Why should some athlete that spends more time on the bench than actually playing get paid more than a teacher who is building our future leaders. Teachers are the ones spending most of the year teaching us what we need to be successful in our future jobs. The professional leagues should drop the salaries to average salaries of regular careers because the athletes don’t even work for half of the year so why should they be paid so much. They should get paid for how they perform and not by some contract that they sign which guarantees them a huge amount of money regardless of how they play. The money athletes are being paid would be money better spent on education or paying teachers or people who do something for the community, such as firefighters or police officers, and not spent on overpaid athletes. Sport clubs could start a charity and put money in that. It could go to kids that need it or for kids that are sick in the hospital. I believe there are so many other careers that deserve more money than they get paid. People put their lives in danger and risk their lives for us the least we could do is give them what they deserve. Children lose their father and mothers. While Husbands and Wives lost their spouse. They risk giving something far more important than a game. They can’t get it back but athletes can just win the next game. Why should they get paid to be bad role models and influence children in a bad way. Money makes them spoiled, greedy and selfish. Athletes should not get paid more than they contribute to society. I hope after reading my essay you agree with me about how athletes are getting paid way too much money.
Work Cited
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