The last clarification is that I will be addressing professional athletes as a whole, and not addressing each particular league, although I will be utilizing examples from the independent leagues.
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.
Figuring out whether a person deserves the money they make is a very difficult task and when you begin to try and do it for athletes, a group of people it seems everyone has an opinion on, it is even harder. There are four major reasons that I feel athletes deserve all of their money. The first reason is how difficult it is to become an athlete. By this I mean how hard it is to be one of the few who can have the genetic ability, go through the various levels of competition, overcome obstacles such as injury and are able to actually compete as a professional athlete. The second reason is because of how tough a life they live. By this I mean how difficult athletics are on the athletes body, how much time is spent on the road, and the unique and demanding schedules they attend to. The next reason is because of the amount of money they generate by playing their sports. This addresses all of the money that other people are making off of the athletes performances including owners, clothing manufacturers, advertisers, just to name a few.