Free agency season is upon us in the NFL. It’s the time of year when men with absurdly large bank accounts open up their wallets to sign players with not-quite-as-absurdly large bank accounts. And with that routine, we get the whining from people who call the players “overpaid.” Overpaid? Compared to what?
In case you hadn’t noticed, football is a business. Fans buy tickets (or they watch on TV, which creates a huge advertising market, which creates huge TV contracts). The owners take the money from the tickets and the TV deals, and they pay the players. (Yes, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but you get the picture.) The end result is that people (say, Calvin Johnson) can sign contracts for $132 million. (Of course, keep in mind that the numbers you always hear are really just splotches of ink on paper; NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed and Johnson could very well be cut sometime before his contract expires. Pay attention to the guaranteed number; in Johnson’s case, $60 million. Still pretty good, right.)
To the 99% of us, that sounds like an exorbitant amount of money. And it is. But does he deserve it? Of course he does. The simplest argument is that someone is paying him that money; therefore, he deserves it. His owner and general manager are perfectly happy to pay him that money (well, I’m sure they’d have liked to have given him less, but Calvin Johnson wasn’t holding a gun to their heads and demanding $132 million). Continue reading ‘complaining about overpaid athletes’