Two Sides to Every Coin

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1089195-two-sides-to-every-coin-are-professional-athletes-overpaid

In this article, the author compares both sides to the argument of whether athletes are paid too much or not.
In the case of athletes getting overpaid, the author uses a way of thinking that I haven't used yet. That compared to normal, middle-classed Americans, Payton Manning made more last year than someone in the middle class will make in their entire life-time. Are they really worth that much? And yet, we see the players and coaches going on strike to demand more money, claiming they need more money, though they're making tens of thousands of dollars every game. The article also showed this comparison of average, maximum, and minimum pay for the Bears, Bulls, Cubs and Blackhawks.

• The highest paid Bears player made over 13 million dollars in 2011
• The highest paid Cubs player will make 19 million dollars in 2012
• The highest paid Bulls player will make 13.5 million dollars in 2012
• The highest paid Blackhawks player will make 6.3 million dollars in 2012
• The lowest paid Bears player made $330,000 in 2011
• The lowest paid Cubs player will make $417,000 in 2012
• The lowest paid Bulls player will make about $850,000 in 2012
• The lowest paid Blackhawks player will make $512,000 in 2012
• The average Bears player made about 2 million dollars in 2011
• The average Cubs player will make over 6 million dollars in 2012
• The average Bulls player will make just under 5 million dollars in 2012
• The average Blackhawks player will make just over 2.7 million dollars in 2012

The article also has arguments of why the athletes get paid what they deserve. It is really us, the fans, that are making them so much money by willing to pay $75 to go to a game. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of  people and you get a LOT of money. We also buy memorabilia and jerseys that have our favorite players names on the back. So it is really us fans that get the money to the player's hands.

Also because the athletes have such a short career, it seems almost necessary for them to have a higher salary. Where the average American will retire from the ages of 65 to 75, professional athletes will retire when they no longer have the ability to play a sport, which can end in their mid-30s.

There is also the problem of injuries. Since the athletes get injured so often, health insurance agencies will often turn down athletes to get health insurance, so they'll have to pay medical bills in full.

Proffessional Athletes' Yearly Salaries

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ycn-10423863

This site shows how much a player in each gets paid on average. As you can see, These players get paid millions of dollars. Are they worth the pay they get? Well, with all the ads they act in and all of the sponsors they have, they might as well deserve it.

In some sports where there are few players on a team, like basketball, players are paid more . Where as in sports where there are many players on a team, such as football, each individual player, on average, isn't paid as much.

Synthesis & Plan

 1. I have researched both sides of my topic. Whether or not professional athletes make to much money. I researched people who say that they are paid too much and those who say they deserve the pay.

2. What is the maximum salary a player can get paid for each sport? What is the minimum salary a player can get paid for each sport? What is the average salary of athletes? What sport pays athletes the most? How much Revenue do sports bring in each year? How much are athletes paid for product endorsements?

Athletes being paid too much

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/366795-do-athletes-get-paid-too-much-money

This Article talks about how athletes are being paid way too much money and how they take for granted how much money they earn. Every time Kobe Bryant scores a basket, he gains the yearly average of a teacher's salary. Now that, is way too much .

Another interesting point that this article seems to bring up is that it's not so much that the athletes are being paid too much, but that other people that might be more deserving should be paid the same amount.

Athletes Aren't paid too much.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/55644-why-pro-athletes-arent-paid-too-much

According to this article, athlete's have a reasonable salary because the sports industry in the United States makes so much money, so why shouldn't these athletes get paid the money they made by bringing in people to watch them play? I partially agree with this. The sports industry brings in much money from ticket sales, advertising,merchandise, etc., that the athletes that are bringing in the money should get a good amount of it. I  also disagree with the article with the fact that the says that not many other people can say that they go to work everyday taking the risk that they might get injured. This, however is false. Firefighters, police officers, and soldiers in the military go to work risking their lives everyday, but why aren't they paid as much as professional athletes?

Why do Athletes get paid so much?

What I know- I know that obviously that professional athletes get paid a whole bunch. They make millions of dollars a year.

Why I want to study- I would like to study this because professional Sports are a big part of American culture.