Before I can begin to present my arguments to you, we must clarify some language so that we are actually in line with what is being discussed. To start when I am talking about professional athletes I am speaking of male athl

We will start by looking at how difficult it is to become a professional athlete. I feel that this is an important aspect in determining how much one should be paid. The simple reason for this is supply and demand. Now you might be saying by this logic shouldn’t the president make more that his $250 000 per year when an athlete like Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Farve makes so much money the president would have to serve 42 consecutive 4-year terms to make the same amount. Well the response to this is how many kids are practicing addressing the nation at age 8. Millions of kids play sports each year across the united states and currently there are only about 2000 professional athletes. To give a better statistic according to MLB statistics of the players who are drafted each year in the MLB draft only 8.3% make it through the minor leagues to the major league level. That means that even once you reach a level that you are being paid to play baseball you statistically only have a 1 in 10 chance of making it to the major league level. Other than just the statistical data there are a number of factors involved in becoming a professional athlete. Some of these factors aren’t even controlled by the individual. If you look at the simple factor of sex, there has only been one female to play in the NHL, Manon Rheaume, a goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightening. She had a very brief career however she is still the only female to play in one of the four major sports. Another factor is size and body type, for instance in basketball a player in the NBA can be considered small at 6’4”. So if you can overcome the odds and happen to have a body that makes professional athletics a possibility you still have to overcome injuries, and a very demanding lifestyle. This leads us to my next reason for athletes deserving their high contracts.

The final argument against athletes deserving their contracts is that they are causing sports to turn into big business, rather than just being for entertainment. Although it is difficult for any sports fan to endure strikes such as the baseball strike in 1994 or the hockey strike in the 1994-95 season, they are a part of this business just like any other business. Those people who neglect the business aspect of sports are stuck back in the era when TV was not yet bringing sports to audiences of millions. Of course sports are part of big business and that is why athletes deserve so much money. They are the focal point of a multi-billion dollar industry. To say that sports should return to this pre-TV era, is simply a notion that is illogical for everybody involved. As long as owners are making money, and fans are loving to watch the athletes perform the industry will just continue to expand into unknown boundaries.

My position on the subject of whether or not athletes deserve to have such high wages is that they do deserve all that they make. I realize that I tend to have bias in this situation being an amateur athlete with hopes of one day being a professional. I also realize that I come into this sort of a topic with a number of assumptions, most of which would favor the athletes position. I hope that when reading this you can see that I have provided an accurate portrayal of the situation of salaries in athletics. I also hope that you will be able to follow my reasoning and eventually agree with my opinion that athletes deserve to have the high salaries they do. I will begin by first showing you the major reasons that I feel athletes deserve such large contracts.

etes at the highest level competing in the major north American sports. Therefore I am only discussing the salaries of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Hockey League (NHL), and National Football League (NFL). As far as the definition of what constitutes a salary that is “too high” I mean a salary that is out of proportion with the work that one participates in and

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