Pro Athletes and Salaries - Overpaying?

Essay by cpc114High School, 11th gradeB, October 2010

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Sports Literature

Salaries & Pro Athletes

Most people in America probably have a pretty good argument when they say they are being paid too little to do too much. Professional sports stars, on the other hand, display a lot of nerve when they use such a phrase. Sports stars are also held to lower standards than are other people. With the high-salary and low-moral standards, sports stars are the most overrated and overpaid people on the planet.

For example, Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics, who started his professional basketball career with the Minnesota Timberwolves, took the ACT test three times in high school, and failed all three times. He also took the SAT test once and failed. Garnett decided not to go to college although he was the most highly sought after basketball player that year, and if his test scores were high enough, could attend almost any college through a scholarship.

This decision took him to the NBA draft in 1995, where the Minnesota Timberwolves selected him in the first round. The T-Wolves later signed an extension for six years for almost 21 million a year. That works out to "125 million dollars to play a game for six years, and he never was college educated" (Lenard 87). In 2007, when Garnett was traded to the Boston Celtics, they extended his contract three more years for sixty-million dollars (Kevin Garnett).

Every year we hear of some new name, some new player in the sports news getting a new record contract which sets a much higher mark and blows away the high from the year before. One must now ask themselves whose fault it is that these men and women are getting paid more and more. Most guesses are that the fans, paying fifty dollars for a ticket,