Before you read the rest of this I would like to make it very clear that this is just an observation, I love sports, and I am not disrespecting any of the players I am about to mention.
Have you ever thought about how many millions of dollars professional athletes make?! It's amazing. Let's start with some of the lower paid professional athletes:
- Rory McIlroy won $1.44M yesterday in the BMW Championship on the PGA Tour. The total purse for the BMW Championship was $8,000,000.
- Yesterday Serena got $1.9M for her US Open win. Today the winner of the men's final will receive the same amount. *Quick Side Note: How awesome is it that men and women get the same amount of prize money in the the Grand Slam events?! The Open will have spent $24,054,000 on prize money this year. The Grand Slam events actually are on the lower end of the USTA and WTA tournaments when it comes to prize money. Players are working to raise the purses at Slams so they will be "in closer line with their own tour events in terms of the percentage of prize money."
Those are the sports with athletes who are paid on the low end of the scale when it comes to professional athletes. In the NFL, it's another story.
- The highest paid athlete in the NFL is Peyton Manning, making $18M this year and having a $96M contract for the next five years. To put that in perspective with another athlete in a different sport, this year Manning will be paid three times the amount Serena Williams has made this year. He will have made 3/4 of the amount of the entire purse of the US Open. To put it in perspective with the rest of the country (median income is currently about $51,000), Manning will make about 350 times the amount of the average worker this year. WHAT?! There is no possible way I can comprehend that amount. Wow.
- My favorite player, Tom Brady, is going to make almost $8M this year (about 150 times the amount of the U.S. median income). His contract through 2014 will end up making him $78,000,000. Again, wow.
These guys and gals play sports. And they are paid amazing amounts of money. While I know that they are paid by the teams (which are private organizations, so it is not our tax dollars or anything paying these players), sports bring a lot of money into cities that have pro teams, and sports are highly valued in our society, the sheer volume of these figures is staggering to me. The fact that these players feel like they deserve these kinds of salaries makes me a little nauseated.
Wes Welker is a prime example of a player I love who was in contract negotiations this summer who, frankly, disgusted me. He wanted $11.42M this year with a long-term contract because he felt he was worth that much to the Patriots organization. He is now on a one year contract, making about $9.5M this year, and I'm pretty sure that yesterday in the season opener he got a total of 14 yards (fourteen?!?!! Is this a high school stat???) and let a perfect pass bounce off his helmet.
So. It's crazy! I know that a lot of players have their own charities that they've started and they do good in their communities, so that's really great! It just seems like our society values athletes much more than police officers, teachers, and firefighters. I feel like I'm going to get a lot of crap for that comment, but if I'm wrong, then why don't we pay the men and women who keep us safe, educate our children, and rescue our families more money? Should we pay more taxes so we can pay our public servants more? Is privatizing law enforcement and education the answer? I don't know, but just by looking at the figures, I feel like I can say our priorities might be a little mixed up.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi
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