Salary Caps: How Athletes Should Earn Money Wednesday, May 30, 2012 By Braydon Hayes Lebron James= Overpaid Athlete - Google Images Advertising     Most people work hard to earn money. People, including myself, work hard through high school and go to college in hopes of achieving the “American Dream” or even beyond that. The dream of making money. Some people achieve this dream of making money (and a lot of it) by simply just being talented at something. Some of these people are professional athletes. The main issue with athletes is that they make WAY too much money. Think about it. Some of the highest paid athletes make up to $75 million a year. That’s an unbelievable amount. Tiger Woods (a professional golfer) makes $75 million mostly from his endorsements such as Nike and Electronic Arts, even after his 2009 scandal involving all the women he had affairs with. Imagine how much he made before more than half of his endorsements dropped him. Kobe Bryant is a professional basketball player who makes $53 million a year. Professional tennis player Roger Federer makes $47 million from prestigious endorsements such as Rolex, Wilson, and Nike. No matter what the sport, these athletes are making big money. Take Alex Rodriguez for example. In 2000, he signed a $252 million dollar contract with the Texas Rangers, but was eventually traded to the Yankees who picked up this record-breaking contract.     Professional athletes make so much money that they themselves, their children, grandchildren, and great-children could live in comfort.  It’s astonishing how much money they make. Now some would say that these professional athletes work hard to earn their money. They have to be in top physical shape, eat right, and so on and so forth. But the fact is that these athletes make so much money by simply excelling at catching, kicking, and throwing balls. Sure, I would much rather trade my place in the world to make millions and millions of dollars to have fun and to basically “play” for a living. Wouldn’t you?     Now, this is what needs to happen. In every professional sport, there needs to be a salary cap of $25 million and teams shouldn’t be able to sign players to contracts over $100 million.  With salary caps, athletes wouldn’t make this crazy money.     Making money in sports should be based on your performance. If you perform well, you make more money. If you don’t perform well, you don’t make as much money. Because to be honest, some of these players that sign big contracts really don’t care about performing at the level they’re capable of because they already have what they want, the money.     Take a look at Albert Pujols, first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He just signed a ten year, $240 million dollar contract and is by far not performing at the level he should. Pujols is a slugger who hits above .300 every year. Except for 2012. He is hitting .212 with three homeruns and 18 RBI’s. In the baseball world, these are the numbers you’d expect from someone a little under the level of mediocrity.     Sports need salary caps, period. Most people who get the big contracts don’t even perform at the level they should and players should be paid based on their performance. Being paid all that money doesn’t make sense. It’s about time these athletes actually start earning their money based on their performance, just like everyone else in the world.

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