Kobe Bryant brings in $24.8 million a year, LeBron James gets $12.5 a year, and Alex Rodriguez takes home $27.5 million a year. Between three star athletes they make a combined almost $65 million dollars a year, not counting endorsements. The average salary in the United States according to a 2011/2012 survey is $47,000 (Average Salary). It is understood to most that the “job” of a professional athlete can be strenuous to the athletes themselves as well as their families, however to make a yearly salary of $27 million is a little excessive. In the state that today’s economy is in, there needs to be strict salary caps for professional athletes, not only to create more equality amongst Americans, but to bring more equality to the individual sports themselves. A salary cap is basically how much a team is allotted to pay a player. The most recent news of salary caps were with the NBA lockout, however, salary caps have been around for a while. “Basketball was the first sport to cap salaries, in the 1984-85 season, and a similar restriction went into effect in football in 1994” (Staudohar). There are two types of salary caps, hard and soft. A soft salary cap, mostly used in the NBA gives teams a little bit of leniency of going over their cap when they are trying to re-sign players. A hard salary cap, most commonly used in the NFL and NHL, means that there are strict limitations to teams and what they are allowed to spend. What caused the issues with the NBA lockout was the fact that “owners were insisting on a hard salary cap of $45 million per player payroll for each team, reduced from the current soft cap of $58 million” (LEXISNEXIS NBA CAPS UNHAPPY). There are pros and cons with figuring out salary caps and the rules and regulati... ... middle of paper ... ...journal/post/2009/11/30/Level-the-Playing-Field-Consider-State-Taxes-when-Developing-Salary-Caps-in-the-Major-Sports.aspx http://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/issues/68/68.4/DiMascio.pdf http://bleacherreport.com/articles/606091-nfl-lockout-for-dummies-explaining-the-nfl-labor-dispute-in-laymans-terms http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=8422&sr=lni%28531F-SD81-DY37-3363%29 http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=8422&sr=lni%2853P5-WRD1-DYJJ-P083%29 Searched Professional Sports and Salary caps in the library database…. Clicked on #3 salary caps not a good thing for NBA or fans Detroit News. http://boston.cbsradio.stats.com/mlb/story.asp?i=20111222194401695711608&ref=hea&tm=&src= http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-04-05/sports/30055329_1_nfl-lockout-injunction-nfl-players
Anyone who has been involved in an organized sport, whether it is backyard football or a high school sports team, knows that these sports all have organizations that are responsible for setting rules, determining conditions of play, and penalizing individuals who infringe the rules. Some of the organizations like the National Football league and the MLB are familiar to most people, the rules they follow are not generally understood by anyone who is not closely associated with the sport. Most fans and sport critics assume that what is happening inside these organizations are of little concern to them. However, this is not the case. In the MLB, the New York Yankees spend an excessive amount of money every year to obtain big name players. A luxury tax was put into effect for teams that go over the spending limit. However, the Yankees are the only team that pays the tax because they are the only team that exceeds the spending limit. The players, coaches, fans, and I have argued that a salary cap would be the best possible way to allow teams in the Major Leagues an equal opportunity getting to the World Series.
Overall, compelling points exist supporting or not supporting a salary cap in baseball. Teams have the benefit of a salary cap existing, and out of that, a balance in free agency forms and a sense of championship parity develops too. On the other side of the spectrum, teams can use the Moneyball method of recruiting and signing players, along with tax implications and revenue sharing to balance out payrolls. The main factor in deciding if a salary cap is appropriate is the factor of fairness among the teams. Therefore, based off the support the research provides, the implementation of a salary cap is necessary.
Through channels of competitive balance, the leagues have put restrictions on free agency. The MLB does this by requiring players to be in the league for six years before declaring free agency, and the NFL puts a restriction on free agency for some players, done by allowing teams to match offers players have received from other teams. Determining a player’s MRP becomes an easier process than in the labor markets of other industries due to the availability of statistics of player’s and their contribution to their team’s success. The difficulty of this process lies in the determination of how revenues for a team are produced.
A salary cap gives all the teams an equal chance to sign players. It also keeps teams with a lot of money not able to acquire every all-star they want , or any player who is a free agent. Some Major League Baseball teams like the Anahiem Angels and the Atlanta Braves are owned by very wealthy people and companies. The Anaheim Angels are owned by Disney.(Worisnop, 128) So with no surprise the Angels can produce a team which can be very competitive, and have several all-star players. Just recently they exercised this advantage by signing Mo Vaughn for ninety million dollars over seven years.(Antonen, 2) There were at least four other teams that wanted to sign this all-star, but the Angels easily had the money, and outbid everyone who wanted to sign him. If there was a salary cap in Major League Baseball then the Angels would have thought twice about giving that much money to one player. With the its roster for one year. So giving one player 12.8 million dollars for one year does not really make sense if the salary cap is fifty million dollars a year. That would leave only 37.2 million dollars for the twenty-four other players, which equals each player getting on average a little less than one and a half million dollars a year.
As long has there has been business, Management and Labor have warred against each other for a bigger piece of the pie. Major League Baseball is no different. In the early years of professional baseball the owners controlled the salaries of the players and decided where they could play and what they would be paid. The players were bound to their team by the Reserve Clause that stated, the services of a player will be reserved exclusively for that team for the next season. This resulted in keeping the player’s salaries artificially low because the players were not allowed to offer their services to any other team. The Reserve Clause was in effect for more than One Hundred years of baseball history. It was challenged several times but the owners had won every time, until in 1970 when the St. Louis Cardinals traded outfielder Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood refused to play for the Phillies and sued to become a free-agent. Flood’s case was in court for several years going all the way to the Supreme Court. He was never able to play in the Major League again. While he did not win his case, he laid the groundwork for a later case that involved two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally who filed a grievance against the league contending that, because they didn't sign contracts with their previous teams they were free agents. The owners and the Players Association agreed to submit to binding, impartial, arbitration in order to settle this case. On December 23, 1975 the arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in favor of the players and the Reserve Clause was broken, and the era of free agency began in the Major Leagues. In 1976 when free agency began the average player salary was only $52 thousand dollars, but it has increased steadily ever since. By 1990 the average salary for a Major League Baseball player had risen to $589 thousand dollars. This Year baseball will start the 2001 season with an average player salary of more than $2 million, about 40 times higher than the typical wage in 1976 when free agency began.
The focus of professional sports has evolved from one of teamwork and camaraderie to one of avarice and greed. The specific problems in recent years that have stemmed off this overwhelming greed include exorbitant salaries, lockouts (or work stoppages) in professional sports, and the growing disparity among team payrolls. Most recognize these issues as major problems; however, others overlook the greed and see validity in the financial aspect of today's sports world. They argue that professional sports are thriving and should not be modified.
By abolishing the salary cap, the Department of Justice ruling has had a substantial impact on the competitive balance of the NFL. Because the salary cap was removed, over the past 10 years teams from big markets, or who have deep-pocketed owners, have been spending money rampantly. Small market teams have been marginalized to a point of having very little chance to win, as they cannot afford to spend freely on talent, as they do not have the income potential to make money. This progression is similar to what we have seen over the years in professional soccer, specifically in the UEFA champion’s league and Spain’s. In the UEFA Champions League, 12 teams have combined to win 48 out of the 58 championships, or 82.76% of championships. There has been such a lack of Competitive Balance in revenue splitting and salary cap free soccer that even among the best teams in the world there is great disparity. An even more extreme example can be found in Spain’s La Liga, where the top 2 teams have won 65.85% of the league’s 82 championships and the top 5 teams have won 93.9% of the league’s championships. This lack of competitive balance is certainly caused by a lack of salary cap, as the top 2 teams spend up to €190,000,000 per year on players while lower level teams spend up to €14,000,000 per year on players. The NFL’s continued revenue sharing, however, has made it so that disparity in the league isn’t quite as large as it is in professional soccer. Despite these effects of Revenue sharing, the lack of a sal...
So everybody would get paid fair. While others may say or wrecks family history because if you have generations and generations go to one college than they started to get paid it might wreck that history because they will pick the highest paying one. That is not true though because if salary caps were put in everybody would get paid the same. In summary college athletes should be paid because they are too busy to have a job, the NCAA has enough money and they can put in salary caps so everybody get paid
I see advertisements and high profile appearances these players partake in, the question just keeps on popping up in my head. Reading through discussion boards, articles and even editorial papers about the issue, I have found this to be an interesting topic to discuss and with these sources in mind, this will be my foundation for this topic. In this paper, I intend to prove through an intimate discussion and debate that the players of the NBA are overpaid with regards to how much their salaries and contracts are worth. For this paper, the discussion will go into four parts. The first part will introduce the readers to the basketball fever the NBA has brought millions around the globe and a brief rundown of the debate overpaid athletes and salary cuts.
The controversy of athletes being overpaid dates back to 1922, when well-known baseball player George “Babe” Ruth received $50,000 within the first year of his career. Ruth’s extensive wealth was bolstered by dozens of endorsements (Saperecom). As it is shown in figure 1, in the Fortunate 50 Tiger Woods takes the number one spot for highest paid athlete. Tiger’s salary for 2011 is $2,294,116 and like Babe Ruth, his endorsements exceed his salary earning $60,000,000 making his total $62,294,116 (Freedman). It’s crazy to think that 89 years ago professional athletes scarcely made more than the average person today. This is of course not counting the inflation that has occurred since the years which Babe Ruth played baseball.
In 1970, a hotdog costs fifty cents, a pop costs one dollar, a ticket to a NFL game costs fifteen dollars and the average football player made between nine and ten thousand dollars. Jump ahead almost 40 years and a hotdog that cost 25 cents now costs on average five dollars and fifty cents, a pop costs six dollars, a ticket to an NFL game costs 100 dollars and the average player gets paid over two million dollars! Times have changed. Because of all of those price changes, and insignificantly the salary of players, in 1994 the National Football League introduced the first salary cap that allowed owners to spend a certain amount of money on players. The Players Union and the National Football League did this because for one, they were tired of players getting thrown from club to club just being a price and two to make things more equal between the teams. Today, money and fame have made players and owners very greedy and cocky people. Players ask for negotiations when they are making well over a million dollars a year and there are people in the United States that are homeless? That it the biggest reason that the salary cap needs to stay in effect. If the salary cap goes out the window, just like it did this past season, a sports fan can kiss NFL goodbye in ten years from now because there will not be enough money to pay all of the players. There should be a salary cap in the National Football League because it allows organizations to be equal and have a better chance of competing with each other and it may put players in their shoes so they know they can’t have everything they want.
While issues related to competitive balance are not limited to baseball or even sports leagues, Major League Baseball has been one of the sports gaining recent attention regarding competitive balance. Major League Baseball (MLB) is known for its luxury tax and no set salary cap. In the MLB, a number of structural changes have been made to better the competitive balance over time. The draft in 1965 was the first amateur free agent draft. Before this draft players were allowed to sign with whatever team that offered them a contract. This gave a huge advantage to the richer clubs. For example, A team like the New York Yankees who had a lot of money. The qualifying offer is another structural change added. It is a 1 year offer which is determined annually by averaging the top 125 player salaries from the previous year, will be worth $15.1MM this offseason.
The salary of professional athletes are always being debated on whether they make too much or it 's the right amount they should make. Some of the athletes do make millions and millions of dollars, but there is some that don 't. Anyways in order to make the millions first an athletes must make it to the professional level. For example in soccer only 1.4% of people actually make it to the professional level. So the rest of the people make it for other sports such as football, basketball, baseball, and others. To be considered a professional athlete you must be getting payed to play a sport. They will be playing for a league and even tournaments and get rewarded with more money if they win. Some may think an athlete
Many players have risen to stardom by becoming a professional athlete. Athletes have come from many different backgrounds; some from wealthy and some from poverty raised backgrounds. Salaries are continuing to rise, and money doesn’t seem to be an issue. Athletes are getting what they want from the owners by negotiating through their agents. Athletes’ salaries aren’t from their owners, but they come from other sources (“Athletes’ Salary”). Athletes get paid an extremely high salary for the work they do, and should consider the value of their work. They do not deserve the extreme amount they get paid and something should by done about it.
Sport has always entertained and influenced our lives. It creates dreams for children and goals for adults. However, many fans are oblivious to the millions they pocket each year. It is without doubt that our sports stars are grossly overpaid. Their annual earnings exceed those we make in a lifetime, even when compared to highly qualified professionals.