Professional Athletes Should Be Paid

In today’s society, the high salaries of professional athletes’ are on the front page of every mass media stream from USA TODAY to Facebook. Year after year their salaries continue to rise to astronomical numbers with no end in sight. The average American will never see in that kind of money in their lifetime and with the recent economic recession, they are not too excited about the salaries of athletes. There is a perception towards athletes that they are greedy people whose only concern is for the fastest cars, designer clothing, and liberal spending but this is not true for all athletes. There is a phrase in sports, “In college, they play for the name on the front but at the pro-level, they play for the name on the back.” This means that the athlete has lost the

There are many factors that we must consider before making rash generalizations concerning these athletes. One factor is the time they spend practicing. Professional athletes spend time in various environments such as gyms, football fields, baseball fields and the like. With the duration of the average sports season lasting between four and seven months, athletes practice nearly every day to include the offseason. To begin with, there is an old saying, “Time is money”. To people, life is priceless for it is something money does not bring. Moreover, a person’s time is not very long, especially for famous athletes. Not only is a lot of their time spent practicing, they also have to make time for interviews with the media, which by the way are not fun especially when they are asked tough questions. Additionally, professional athletes consistently sacrifice their time away from family to travel spending many nights in hotels away from family. Many athletes grow weary from doing the same routine over and over and have a hard time dealing with these issues I mentioned above. Therefore, they are worth the high salaries they are