Today's athlete is blessed with talent of course. And the franchise owners clearly are business savvy. They also have busted their gluteus to its maximus in order to ascend to the professional ranks. It is there that the floodgates of wealth seem to open. Many of us casual fans think it overkill to be paid an inexhaustible supply of pesos to play a game.
Than again others don't care. Because quite frankly that sector of fandom doesn't see it as their money being funneled out to the participants.
Truth is many of us turn this idea of getting our piece of the pie into a rallying call at work. How many obnoxious "show me the money" people do we work with right? That is when we secretly ask ourselves "Am I getting the "love" I deserve to bag these groceries?" Or "I only get $10 per for shoveling this?" Perhaps you wonder "is $60 K a year really enough for me to maintain this level of quality accounting?" Insert your own question if you'd like.
But really is it what we do at our job? Or even the importance of our job? Surely performing a kidney transplant is more a value than transplanting one family from one state to another. Sports however teaches us an interesting twist on this reality. The fact is our income is broadly based on the revenue of the industry we are in.
So for example let's presume you could get CBS Television to pay your factory to air your skills, that would heighten interest in what you do for sure. And if the local radio station bought the rights to broadcast your job? Things would really get going then. Then imagine people purchasing hats, tee-shirts, banners, and mugs that have your image or your companies logo on it just because you work there. Then to top it off suppose there were 25,000 people in the area willing to pay $21.99 a ticket to watch you perform your job 16 or maybe 162 times a year! Suddenly your value has went through the roof. Especially if you add the fact that they just can't replace you with just any one.
Now the twist in all of this is this is how athletes and their employers print their money and/or have it coming out of their orifices. We enable this to happen. And as fans for the most part we don't care. We like wearing our Philadelphia Eagles hat or our LeBron James jersey. The Derek Jeter swagger comes with the Yankee tee-shirt and matching sweats.
Additionally we are well aware of how even though we don't pay directly to see the game on TV or listen to it on the radio, we add to the enormous kitty of funds for those broadcast networks. Because we watch or listen to the shows advertised by that network and/or patronize the companies who give us commercial breaks during the games. Then finally there are those among us who can't write the check or whip out the plastic fast enough to buy tickets to go to the games.
So the bottom line is from fans of the past to the present nucleus of fans, we have given a loud "heck yeah" to the question of whether sport related employers and employees are worth the megabucks!
