Athlete

’s Salaries Essay, Research Paper

Are professional athlete?s salaries well justified?

Shoot a good game of hoops and grab a million bucks! Professional athletes play their favorite game and they are paid outrageous amounts of money. It seems almost unreal that people are paid anything at all to entertain the public by playing a game of golf or to running around on a football field. The high salaries of professional athletes are greatly unjustified because they provide an unessential service to society.

An essential part of life is money, and without it some people die, starve, or become ill. The money used to pay professional athletes could be put to a much better use by donations to charities or foundations that help the needy. With so many other options for entertainment, it seems strange that people would rather pay fifty dollars to see a football game than donate that fifty dollars to a charity and watch television instead. Doctors and lawyers are paid similar amounts to that of athletes, but with justification. Doctors and lawyers save lives everyday and they went to school for many years to learn their trade, but athletes do not save lives and do not require and educational back round preferences in order to make their millions. Money is so important as a part of survival in the cruel world. Irony comes to mind when I think of all of the everyday, average citizens are taking their hard-earned money and handing it to people that play games for a living and make a least twice what the average, working person makes. Money has limits, entertainment should too.

By promoting the extravagant salaries awarded to pro-athletes people are in turn promoting bad societal values. Athletes have a tendency to believe that money makes them invincible. Dennis Rodman, for example, does many rude, outlandish things and when he does something lawfully wrong he is simply fined and forgiven.