Do you believe Athletes are just in it for the money...

[Optimus_Prime_]

...I get this a lot now, especially being a professional sports fan, that all athletes care about is the money. It's certainly a charge you could weigh against certain athletes, and in my opinion, they usually stick out like a sore thumb. Someone today told me all Tom Brady cares about is getting paid. Really?!? The guy won a superbowl in 2001 and was still making his back-up QB pay. He didn't have to win that superbowl to prove he was good, but he did it anyways.

Here are some of, in my opinion, the dumb rationals for this kind of logic.

If another team paid (him/her) more they'd leave: Loyalty argument. A false conflation of personal convictions and business. If someone said "hey, I'll pay you twice as much to work for me doing the same thing" I'd leave. My cousin says "it's different because you're middle class". My cousin is also still in college, and I'm not. He says "athletes are just greedy". But if I can make more I will, always, to me that's just common sense. Money makes things easy, and stable. Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly creates more avenues to happiness. Furthermore this fan ******** over departing players doesn't seem to occur on the field. Tom Brady supposedly is very good friends with Matt Cassel, despite him leaving for greener pastures. People I work with get better job offers, and 99.9% of the time they leave because of it. I don't hate them for that, I actually tend to agree with their decisions.

If they weren't getting paid they wouldn't do it: If I wasn't getting paid I wouldn't do my job either. I think people only say this because their job appears glamorous. My cousin would say "if I sat back and you paid me millions of dollars to play Football, I'd do it". I'm sure you'd also do it poorly. There is no "sitting back" in sports, they really do expect 110%, because the amount of people qualified to play at a professional level is few, and the demand is enormous. Furthermore, for eight years Tom Brady played Football for free, and even turned down the Montreal Expos so he could keep playing for free at Michigan. Michael Jordan played his sport pro bono for many years, suffering on the bench while other players got on the court experience. They clearly loved their sports because they dedicated time they could've spent making money elsewhere to pursue athletics. When I was in High School and playing sports I used to spend from 8am-10pm at school Monday thru Friday, leaving no time for a job, and I'm not one of those who was gifted enough to continue...but I understand the sacrifice.

 

[kit1982]

I think alot of it depends about which Sport your talking about, I mean if you look at Tennis players the amount of travelling and time away from families most of those guys and gals have to be doing it for the love of the sport you get away from your top 20 and some of them are making a very average wage. Most of them will never make the massive bucks but still go on the road for months at a time.

But then I look at a soccer player like Carlo Cudicini who could've been one of the best Keepers of the modern age, but was more than happy to be a substitute, play about 10 games a year and pick up £30,000 p/w and have his nice home in London rather than move around the country, maybe get less money but be more successful.
Some are happy after all the sacrifice you've mentioned to settle for a decent career and tons of cash, some like who you've named are willing to risk it all.

Either way I don't blame any of them.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

The other thing I think people miss is just how hard it is to become a professional athlete. They are phenomenally lucky. Every time you watch a college Football match (two teams), only .03 of a player on that field will make it into the NFL. I don't mean become a star, just become a name (perhaps very temporarily) on a roster. Obviously that .03 is not evenly distributed, but it just shows how great you must be to make it. People talk about how much more important doctors or teachers are, but those positions had a .000294% success rate it would be a lot easier to justify paying them obscene amounts of money. Furthermore, we don't pay jobs by importance. Arguably janitors and trash collectors are highly important. Were all of them to disappear it would be mere days before there absense would become an incredible problem...but we don't pay them obscene amounts of money.

 

[Immortalfire]

Aren't we all? We do our jobs to get paid.

Their job just happens to be throwing/hitting a ball. And if they don't do it right or good enough, they can get traded or let go, pretty much like any other employee.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Aren't we all? We do our jobs to get paid.

Their job just happens to be throwing/hitting a ball. And if they don't do it right or good enough, they can get traded or let go, pretty much like any other employee.

Totally agree 100%. I think something my cousin didn't get, being a student, is how important money is in my (everyone's) lives. If I were in those athletes shoes I'd want to be paid accordingly.

 

[doih]

Statements like "all members of group X are Y" are almost never right.

I don't think it's fair to say that pro athletes are just in it for the money. Firstly, this ignores the fact that many, many athletes have to have 'normal' jobs because they can't support themselves via their sport (think lacrosse, rugby in North America, American Football in Europe, etc.). That being said, these arguments usually apply to the Big 4 in North America, and things like the highest leagues of soccer, rugby, cricket, motorsports, tennis, etc. in various places around the world, so I guess that can slide.

Saying 'they're just in it for the money' overlooks the fact that to become a pro athlete requires tremendous dedication to reach that level. To use a more 'normal' example, if you want to become a doctor mainly because you think it pays well, you'll probably not even make it to med school. If you somehow get to med school, do well in med school, finish residency, etc. then you might have more money than the 'average folks' but you'll be miserable. It takes more than desire of monetary reward to succeed in these kinds of things, and the people who played because they thought they'd get rich are probably hustling at a local playground court.

On the other side, I don't think the loyalty argument is a great one, simply because when we're talking about the tens of millions of dollars, the amount of money becomes much less of an issue. Yes, Cliff Lee took a pay cut to go back to the Phillies instead of going to the Yankees. But a pay cut/raise for Cliff Lee is not the same as a pay cut/pay increase for Joe the Plumber moving from Plumbing Company A to Plumbing Company B (no disrespect to plumbers intended, it's a very important job). According to the government, I've been poor, and I've been rich. I can attest that the higher your monetary worth, the less important the number becomes (unless you're a ****ing idiot who acquires money in order to piss it away on useless ****).

Tom Brady and Michael Jordan are cited in post 1 as people who played for free, but Jordan had a legendary work ethic and was even more dedicated to his craft than his peers, most of whom were already highly dedicated individuals. It's an outlier of an outlier. I don't know as much about Brady because of my lack of knowledge of the NFL, but I'd wager it's much the same with him as with a Jordan, Gretzky, etc. Further, couldn't we argue that people playing one of the Big 4 sports (or their equivalents in other countries) are motivated by the dream of becoming rich and famous by playing this sport?

Also, notwithstanding the fact that becoming and being a pro athlete requires a lot of dedication, the lifestyle of those in the highest leagues is envied by all those looking in. I'm not even talking about being famous, getting to network with the ultra-rich (athletes are rich, those that own the teams are ultra-rich), giving Jessica Alba herpes, etc. I'm talking simply from the perspective of hours worked. Pro athletes have a LOT of downtime, simply because despite all the advances in training and medicines, the human body cannot train long periods without backfiring. Yes, I know that they have to do things like review tape, go over strategy, plus do a lot of community events and such. But they spend a lot of time playing video games, watching movies, playing golf, etc. In the industry I went to school for, many people regularly work 15-18 hour days during the week, and some hours on weekends. At various points in my life, I've worked 20 hour days. Thus, the money itself might not be the whole draw, but the lifestyle is a pretty big part.

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But if I can make more I will, always, to me that's just common sense. Money makes things easy, and stable. Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly creates more avenues to happiness.

I'm not sure why this is a counter to the argument that athletes are in it for the money, because it seems to be saying that you and everyone else also do their jobs for the money. Wouldn't that also include pro athletes?
Pay is important of course when choosing a job, but when people are considering jobs, often non-monetary factors are as important IE: hours, work environment, benefit to society, etc. You say that if someone paid you twice as much to do what you do now, you'd leave your job. But what if you knew you'd be serving under a toxic boss, working huge hours in a building filled with asbestos?

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

I'm not sure why this is a counter to the argument that athletes are in it for the money, because it seems to be saying that you and everyone else also do their jobs for the money. Wouldn't that also include pro athletes?
Pay is important of course when choosing a job, but when people are considering jobs, often non-monetary factors are as important IE: hours, work environment, benefit to society, etc. You say that if someone paid you twice as much to do what you do now, you'd leave your job. But what if you knew you'd be serving under a toxic boss, working huge hours in a building filled with asbestos?

I said that assuming similiar conditions

 

[StorminNorman]

I hope so. They should love the fact their talents are viewed as so valuable compared to others. Their money is what makes them special.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

Aren't we all? We do our jobs to get paid.

Their job just happens to be throwing/hitting a ball. And if they don't do it right or good enough, they can get traded or let go, pretty much like any other employee.

This.

 

[ProjectPat2280]

The amount of effort and skill it takes to not only become a professional athlete but maintain your status as one would lead you to believe that most(not all) athletes are in it because they truly love what they do. Its not like you get drafted to a pro team then just start hitting home runs or catching touch downs. There is a TON of off the field work to do. Rather it be training or studying film. I played baseball post highschool and even then, at that level, there was just too much training involved for me to do both baseball and school and considering i wasnt quite good enough(or maybe i was, but lacked the drive) to make a D1 college team and deff not good enough to make the pro's i had to give it up.

I think to do just about anything with that amount of skill you truly have to enjoy what you do.

 

[Wylie Times]

Whatever your job is you better be looking to get paid as much as you can for it. Some people seem to have warped ideals about what professional athletes OWE them because of the money they earn. What I don't get is why that logic only applies to athletes and not the people who employ them.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

I hope so. They should love the fact their talents are viewed as so valuable compared to others. Their money is what makes them special.

That's kind of a warped sentiment (if I'm reading it right, which admittedly I may not be). Franco Harris made very little compared to athletes today, and it doesn't make his "immaculate reception" less special. They do make money based on their market value so to speak, but you can still have a mediocre highlight reel as compared to your comtemporaries but make well more than they do. Actually from player to player the money is rather unremarkable since for many it's relatively level.

 

[Hush]

I think that Cliff Lee shows us that not all athletes just do it for the money. There is a certain amount of love and respect for the game that many players in similar situations would have said **** that and gone for the cash grab. Every sport has a section of players that are pure money grubbing ****es.

While I agree fire your breaking it down to its simplest form and that just isn't the case sometimes. As much as we love to hate Favre clearly he wanted to play because he LOVED the game, he wasn't doing it for the money because he could have sat down at week four and still got the money no matter what. So basically its there job but this job I think means more to them on a deeply personal level than maybe being an account executive means. Did I make sense?

 

[BlackLantern]

maybe not at the start, but as you grow/get older/ your POV changes