Imagine yourself in the life of a professional basketball player. You wake up at 6:30 in the morning for your 2 hour practice at 7:00 which drenches you in sweat. You take an hour-long shower at home before going to a meeting with your agents to discuss your sponsors and endorsements. In this meeting all you have to do is sit lazily on a chair and sign whatever contract your lawyers give you. At 5:00 you go to another 2 hour practice with your teammates and decide to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant. For this amount of effort you make 3,000,000 dollars annually.Many high-level athletes are living their luxurious lives like this.

On the other hand, consider the life of a respectable doctor. This doctor gets up at a grueling time of 3:00 in the morning. He hurries to work in order to save as many lives as he is physically able. He hastily goes from room to room checking on his patients and reassuring families. At midnight he goes home exhausted, with aching feet, and a pounding headache from his hardworking, stressful job. Annually he makes 300,000 dollars, only a tenth of what high-level athletes make.

Professional athletes nowadays make an absurdly large amount of money compared to doctors, but there is no reason that this should be the case. Many athletes only spend 6 hours of their day doing work, which is less than the average 8 hour workday of any other career. Also, athletes don’t have to deal with the same amount as mental stress of the typical hardworking human being. Athletes have hired their own assistants and lawyers that take care of all the stress outside of the athlete's sport. However, people of the general workforce have to deal with their jobs while managing legitimate issues in their life ranging from money usage to getting enough sleep at night. With all of this in mind it is clear to see that general workers, such as doctors, are the ones getting underpaid, not the athletes.

Everyone loves to turn on the T.V. on Sunday afternoon to watch football, but football players shouldn’t be paid more than other jobs that have a greater impact on society. It’s shocking that public servants like teachers and police officers make less than professional athletes (Figueroa). In fact, teachers and police officers are the jobs that are grossly underpaid. They educate and protect the future of our society and barely make a fraction of the money professional athletes do.

There are some who believe that professional athletes are actually underpaid for their sport. They argue that athletes are part of a major industry and provide many jobs to others. This is however untrue. The team owners in fact made the team and provided people with jobs. The athletes are employed by the team owners. Without team owners athletes wouldn’t have a team to join. Therefore, team owners deserve money for their large investments and hard work of creating a team. The athletes do not deserve huge paychecks because they are only employees of their owners.

There are ways to solve the problem of the overpaid wages of professional athletes. For instance, we could simply lower the wages of the professional athletes. NBA players make an average of 2.7 million dollars a year. This is more than enough to fulfill their needs of daily life. If we do lower the wages of the athletes they will work just as hard for a fourth of their paycheck.

Another way to solve this is with contracts. Consider that some athletes have the heart and choose to donate a huge portion of their yearly earnings; however, most don't (Patel). I’m proposing that if we could sign contracts with these athletes to require they give away a portion of their money, then we don't have to worry about athletes being overpaid. These generous donations to charity would help many nonprofit organizations get the required funding that they so desperately need. Also, it would be a positive example to sports fans and make them more inclined to donate money to charities. Overall, signing contracts would have a positive impact on society.

Athletes should not be getting such a ridiculous amount of money. These athletes are lazy and don’t contribute to society like other legitimate jobs do. Also, athletes are selfish and refuse to donate their money to charities. However, if we go through with one of my proposals, in time both the athletes and other jobs can receive their fair share of money.