In today’s sporting world, athletes are being paid close or over 100 million dollars over a spanof five-, six-, seven- years.

Baseball’s Alex Rodriquez 275 million, NBA’s Kobe Bryant 136 million, NFL’s Calvin Johnson 132 million.

But do these guys really need 11, 12 figure contracts?  Yeah these athletes are good enough to earn several million but over 75-, 100 million dollars?

There’s a difference between getting paid because your good and making ends meet, and getting paid because the guy on the other team is getting paid than you. 

Why is there a sense of jealous over this?  If you’re good, and your team knows you’re good and the league knows you’re good, why are you throwing a fit?

The answer is greed.  To get paid more than ends meet because you want to have bragging rights over the next guy for a year or two until the next guy gets paid more than you.

Look at this; The average cost of living is about 25-30,000 a year.  The average salary is a little over 50,000 a year.  The average cost of a house is 280,000.

Do we really need 100 million dollars, that gold-platted Hummer, five houses and four cars? 

Now, I’m not saying that these athlete’s deserve some kind of large salary, on top of trying to make ends meet;. My argument is this, a athlete’s head is inflated when they encountered with such a large number, making them think they are hotter crap than anyone else.

Younger people, from the Pop Warner Level through college level of athletics see this and want to be like Kobe, want to be A-Rod, want to be Lebron James.  It’s called the Lifestyle Construct, we believe in what we see and want to duplicate it for ourselves for our own success sometime down the line.

Do we need to cap it?  Maybe, it’s a double edge sword.  With the rising cost of medical bills and players suing the leagues in their 50s, 60s, 70s; I think it is ok to shut up these athletes up so they “can pay for there medical bills”, but we need to give athletes a education course on how to manage money better, so they can avoid getting the money they spent on drugs and dumb expitudures and blaming the league for it when they need it. 

On the other part,  going off the latter part of the last paragraph, capping it would help make athlete’s to do the right thing instead of figuring it out before it is too late.

Will we ever see this?  Probably never.  It will be a argument that we will be making for decades to come.