In a world where professional athletes, especially football, are our role models and are seen as celebrities; do they get paid too much for this image they have?  They get paid millions of dollars to play sports for a living.  At the same time , we as fans, endorse them by buying products that they are sponsored by and purchase sports memorabilia with their name on it.  Do they deserve this enormous amount of money to play sports?

Elizabeth Vollmer from The Waltonian Eastern University, believes that paying these athletes, “NBA makes $24.7 million, $17.9 million in the MLB, and $1.9 million in the NFL,” is far too high because these average salaries are more than the President of the United States which is $400,000 annually.  This does not seem to be fair to her considering that schoolteachers and veterans do not get paid nearly as much and there is more of these types of people in the world who deserve it more, in her eyes.  To put this in perspective, for each one of Kobe Bryant’s baskets he makes, this amount is, on average, the same as an annual salary for a schoolteacher.  She concludes with talking about allowing these young athletes to acquire this amount of money to play a sport is one of the main reasons why they feel as though they are entitled and lead to many issues. The Waltonian

The Perspective explains to us that with the increasing annual income of professional athletes and the low annual income of the average fan is starting to lead fans away from paying for merchandise and tickets which will ultimately lead to the downfall of the sport because of the lack of an audience.  With sports becoming more and more prevalent throughout the daily life of children growing up, their wish is to become a professional sports athlete “but for the big money, not for the love of the game.”  The main point of this article by The Perspective was that while many think that the overpaying of athletes is something that cannot be changed, the consequences in regard to how people view professional sports will be detrimental further down the road. The Perspective

Megan County from the student run newspaper at Northeastern Illinois University, agrees that professional athletes are overpaid but also states that she is somewhat responsible for this because she, herself, buys highly priced tickets and has purchased at least one piece of apparel for each Chicago team.  We have to remember that even though a sport is being played, it is still very much a business for these teams.  To understand this better, she goes on to explain that “The highest paid public employee are college coaches in 39 out of the 50 states.”  As well as Nick Saban, the head coach for the Alabama Crimson Tide, is the highest paid public employee in all of the United States.  Somehow this does not seem real, but when it comes to football and just sports in general, people are willing to pay and hand and foot to coaches and the like to get their fix of sports and such throughout the year. The Independent

Chris Mueller, a writer for Bleacher Report, poses the question to his audience to think if the amount of money these athletes are paid is actually more than the player is actually worth.  He explains to us that we are partially the one’s to blame for how much they are getting paid because of the amount of money we are willing to pay out-of-pocket to support our teams.  If we simply stopped going to games and buying team related memorabilia we would bring down the overall prices of these to lower the budget.  It is hard for us to stop supporting our favorite players and teams because “there is no way to put a value on how that person has positively affected your life.”  Supporting them gives us the determination in ourselves to do something great in our lifetime.  It gives us self-motivation to not quit and strive for the best. Bleacher Report

Paying an enormous amount of money to support your favorite teams and players seems like a good investment but in the long run, we are contributing the issue that arises about professional players getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to play a sport.  We are causing our problems but at the same time, none of us would dare to stop paying and stop supporting them.  If we did, the true reason to play a sport, for the love of the game, would be restored and we would see true passion throughout the games and events.