i need some help with my debate in school about how athletes are overpaid. can you give me some tips?

Question

anything will help

Answer 1

Point 1: Athletes are getting paid for their talent. Every person gets paid for their talent in a certain field. Unfortunately for me teachers get paid little because it is a talent that many people share. Not many can dunk the ball like Shaq, thus his talent is more valuable. Laws of supply/demand play into this and force the market on guys like Shaq sky high.

Point 2: Athletes are entertainers, and since our society attends these functions with great regularity they get paid for their performances. Our society spends vasts amounts of money to see these athletes on TV or in person. The athletes are getting paid for their ability. Athletes have negotiated their salaries based on the amount of income a franchise (team) brings in. Thus a WNBA contract is much smaller than an NBA contract.

Hope this helps.
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Answer 2

Is your position that the athletes are or are not overpaid. I would argue that they are underpaid (as ridiculous as it sounds) because when you take into account how much a particular athlete brings to the franchise and compare it with their take, their salaries are pretty small. Look at how many Urlacher jerseys there are out there. The real NFL ones are $100 each and there are A LOT of them floating around. I doubt that Urlacher is getting much, if anything, from that revenue.

That said, if you're looking to argue that they make too much money, if you take the average salary of an athlete in any sport and compare it to the average salary of working class people, you will see a huge disparity. Factor in that they are only working during training camp and the regular season and that figure goes up even more.

When politicians talk about the rich getting richer, look at the government's definition of rich. The top 10% of all wage earners pay 62% of income taxes. How much determines "rich"? The answer would surprise you. "Rich" is an income of $75,000/yr.

I hope that this helps in some way.

Answer 3

As for being overpaid, that is relative. Athletes get paid for the talent and entertainment value. These are not jobs anyone can do or do better. The money comes from ticket and merchandise sales. If the money is not there, they would get paid less. The real question is - Why do people pay so much in tickets to see them play?

Answer 4

They obviously aren't doing anything productive except entertaining. They get paid millions to throw a ball around, hurt others if they get in their way, and in some cases, purposely cause trouble in public so the paprazzi can blow things out of proportion, and the athlete becomes an instant celebrity. From there, they get endorsements, and the vicious cycle continues.

Even their coaches get overpaid. Not too long ago, here in San Antonio, there was a story on our high school coaches in the area. Most of them just teach 1 or 2 classes of Health, Science, or Gym, spend the rest of the day on their footballness and get paid $70 - 85,000 a year, while our core subject teachers get no more than $53k.

Answer 5

There are only two arguments I consider valid FOR the salaries that professional athletes are paid:

- They have short careers & need to make money in that short window to pay for decades of their lives (including medical care for play-related injuries) after their career is over;

- They deserve a fair cut of what the industry brings in in profit since the athletes are the ones making huge life sacrifices to become the players they are & to make the games exciting and entertaining.

Even if you are arguing the opposite side of this debate, be prepared for those two arguments.

If you put forward the argument that people ought to be paid based on their contribution to society, then you could list a number of professions (including "professional athlete") and suggest to the audience/judge that they rank the professions in their minds regarding the contributions to society each makes. I guarantee you that "professional athlete" will not rank higher than "doctor", "teacher", "scientist", "fire fighter", "police officer" or "President of the United States", yet pro athletes make more than any of them.

You could also present the minimum salaries for pro athletes in the major sports leagues. The average salary for the four biggest sports leagues is $2.9 million, but the minimum salaries, paid to backups and bench warmers, are around $300,000 for the four major leagues.

Answer 6

I just wrote an article in my school newspaper that was partly about this. OK...first, they don't do anything of any value to people in general. You know, the ones who don't get $15 million to play for a couple months out of the year, who work hard for their livings. Also, there's definitely someplace else the money could go. Why don't people like cops and firefighters get it? They don't need or deserve their money, but they still get way too much of it. Hope I helped.

Answer 7

Well, your opponent is going to say that professional athletes deserve money because of their rare talent, and that scarcity deserves high pay in a capitalist system.

Respond by undermining professional sports as unimportant; say their are more important things to sink millions into than entertainment. Also, demonstrate the many vices that professional athletes spend their money on.

Answer 8

An intern makes $100k a year working 80 hour weeks helping to save lives in the ER. Alex Rodriguez makes $25,000,000 a year playing baesball. That's all the research you need!!

Answer 9

Americans risking thier lives in Iraq are loosing benefits while baseball players get paid millions a year to throw or hit a ball.

Answer 10

That's a tough one. Technically actors are the same way. You would have to group them all together because they are all paid ridiculous amounts of money yet contribute nothing to society. And I don't mean donating to charities. I mean their JOB is nothing useful. It's just another sad fact that our society is doing everything backwards.