You are getting paid for a physical prowess that is fleeting. That million-dollar quick first step could evaporate with one injury. Even if healthy, you get 10 years tops, and only half of those are your prime. Average out your non-playing years, and you are effectively upper-middle class. If I were a pro athlete, I'd be asking for max money, love of the game or not.
I have absolutely no problem with athletes making as much money as they can. I pay the high ticket prices...the money has to go somewhere. The more in their pockets instead of the owners' the better IMO.
While I can understand the viewpoint that these athletes put their bodies and sometimes lives on the line for a career that lasts 10-15 years at most, I also think if these athletes lived a little bit less lavish lifestyle, they wouldn't need to complain about a 2-3 million dollar discrepancy. With the amount of guaranteed money the all-star caliber players receive, they could easily be set for life...if they didn't feel compelled to buy 15 room mansions and 10 different cars and their own private plane, etc, etc. At the same time...if I was in that position...I'd probably scratch and claw for every last dollar too...thinking about the amount of good I could do with those extra millions of dollars.
I bet if most of us have only 7 - 10 yrs of making money in our career we would do the same too. Most of them are done when they reach 30.
Because the contract says the owner can release the player. The owner isn't backing out of the contract - the contract simply says that the money is not guaranteed.
Sure they do - they have a clause in there that they have to activate. That's the entire reason for signing bonuses. The owner pays one amount for the right to sign the player, no matter how good or bad he is. And then the owner agrees to pay a certain amount for each year they want to keep the player. If the player doesn't like getting stuck in a long-term deal, they always have the option to take a smaller signing bonus and a shorter contract. They tend to choose the guaranteed money for the security aspect. But with that comes the fact that they commit to staying with that team for a longer time if the team wants them.
Yea and what are you going to do with the money? Feed your family like Sprewell? If you had any sort of competence with money, you wouldn't need a max NBA contract to feed your extended family. In the end it's still about being greedy and wanting to live in luxury.
The whole concept of pro sports is weird. It isn't a normal business. If it was there would be suit against teams for being a monopoly. This owners have made billion on the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of players and fans. There are ton of pro athletes who are in terrible shape who are responsible for the NFL's success and value and the owners have screwed them so I think owners have no ground to stand on.
That's completely irrelevant. Randy Moss, Albert Puhols, Lebron James, Sydney Crosby, Tom Hanks, Madonna; these people demand top dollar because they make money for even richer people and they deserve their share. Not because they might blow it on hookers and a coke habit.
How have the owners screwed them? Yes, they made the owners billions of dollars. Similarly, the owners have made them billions of dollars as well. These professional sports leagues pay out 50+% of their *gross revenues* to the players. At the end of the day, the players are making a whole lot more net profit in total than the owners are - which is how it should be, given that the players are the attraction. However, it's hard to argue that athletes being paid millions of dollars to play a game are being screwed over.
THANK YOU. What they spend their money on is absolutely IRRELEVANT. If any of you have a problem with greed...you simply have a problem with capitalism and the American way.
I understand the argument you are trying to make, but I think there is a point where the marginal utility of the money they are arguing over becomes a little absurd. In my mind, a guy complaining about making $100,000 instead of $120,000 is a little different from a guy complaining about making $10M instead of $12M. Maybe that is a little hypocritical? I'm not sure. This feeling is compounded by the fact that we like to kid ourselves that many players place winning first and foremost over money, whereas I have no misguided belief that the hypothetical investment bankers in your example are motivated by anything other than money.
Exactly. How come there's no thread about owners and money. Why doesn't anybody b**** about the money that George Steinbrenner, Jerry Jones, Mark Cuban etc make.
I remember listening to N.D. Kalu on the radio during the Andre Johnson contract "dispute", and he said fans don't understand that its a business first to most players. They are going to emphasize how important winning is in interviews because that is what the media and fans want to hear. But the business side of it always comes first to most players. If winning is so important as most of us thinks it is, why haven't more players taken less and formed a super team? We tend to think success is defined by the number of rings but a lot of players may define it as how much money they have earned over their career.
Because . . . nothing hurts more than making that sacrifice and then watching that superbowl ring go for less than 10K on EBay because you are poor broke and hungry Rocket River
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is... but I will say this. A crappy collective bargaining agreement (like in the NFL) is what causes all these salary and personnel disputes. The owners are really just trading one headache for another when they put together that really lopsided CBA.
What? They have a very short window to make as much $$$$ as possible. If whining works...then that is what they should do. DD
Most NFL players play 3 years or less at the NFL minimum salary. They basically destroy their bodies for less than $900K. And they only get healthcare from the NFLPA for the next 5 years. I don't feel sorry for them, because they get paid to play a game that they love, but it's not the cherry gig that it sounds like. Obviously Randy Moss isn't in that category. He's made 10's of millions and his body will be fine when he retires. But I'm pretty sure that he'd be under a lot of pressure to get whatever he can by the union guys. They don't want players playing for less than their market value. They want to bend the pay scale up, not down. It may not matter much to Randy Moss, but it matters a lot to the scout team guard who will need whatever he can get now for his future.
