Today, the day after the MLB All Star Game is the most boring day in professional sports in the United States. It is the one day* of the year where neither MLB, NBA, NFL, or NHL have an on field sporting event. I am going to take this opportunity to address an issue on professional athletes and their salaries.
A lot of people complain about teams spending a lot of money and having an unfair advantage in being able to sign whoever they want. This is the case in MLB where teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels spend money to get the best players to be in contention for the championship. The people complaining here don't like that the players go for the most money instead of sticking with their team. So I ask those complaining if they would stick with their employer if their competition offered them substantially more to do the same thing?
Secondly, these players want to have a chance to win. Isn't that what playing professional sports is about?
People who do not like the salary structures in MLB (although MLB has added a luxury tax to help curb this) call for salary caps. I am not a fan of this as it keeps teams from using all of their resources to field a competitive team. Also, if the sport is popular elsewhere in the world, you run the risk of having the salary cap keeping the best players in the world from coming to your league. Although the NBA is not quite at a hard salary cap, they are almost there. We see a few teams get more than their share of superstar players like the Celtics, Heat, Lakers, and soon the Nets (no the Knicks are not even close yet). Many of the people who complain about free spending in MLB don't like that these superstars have taken less than they could earn elsewhere in order to pay for a team that can contend for the championship. So I ask these people, which is it that you don't like free spending or salary caps? The fact is that most of best players want to play for championship winning teams.
It seems to me that the people who do not like what is happening with free spending in MLB and players signing for less to play for championship contenders in the NBA want players to stick with the teams that drafted them. I understand the sentiment they have in that they think the players should show some loyalty to the teams that gave them a chance. First of all, we know the draft system is designed to help teams that did not do well in the prior year. If the player were free to sign with whoever they wanted and had to play their way onto the team, instead of just entering a draft there might be something to be said about the team giving them a chance. That is not the case here. In many cases the best players go to bad teams and have to play out their original contract while the team does little to turn themselves into a contender. When the player becomes a free agent, he wants to move to a contender. Forcing a player to stay with the team that drafted him allows teams to underpay their players as there is no market for the talent. Think about what that would mean if it applied to people outside of professional sports. That is not what anyone wants for their own ability to work where they want and negotiate their salary, so why should we expect that with professional athletes?
Some people will argue that because these athletes work in the eye of the public that we should be able to demand certain things of them. For instance, people think it is appropriate to yell profanities at them for not doing well enough and want them to play for less salary. It is never appropriate to yell profanities at anyone. Although I might feel like someone has not done their job, I must remember that I would be yelling at a person and they need to be treated as a person. To do otherwise would be to objectify them into the service I expect them to do.
As for expecting athletes to play for less salary, we have to remember that economics comes into play here. So long as people are willing to pay the prices to attend the games and advertisers are willing to keep paying as much as they do to advertise, the players should receive a good chunk of the revenue. Their playing the games we enjoy watching is the product we are purchasing. If the athletes did not get a decent portion of the revenue, then we would be complaining about team owners raising prices just to make a larger profit and that is another issue when owners do this rather than trying to field a competitive team.
Players, as do most people, want to make more money. They also want to play for a champion. Setting up a system that forces a player to stay with their original team can keep their salaries artificially low. We would not stand for this if such a system were in place for ordinary people. Yet many sports fans expect players to stay with the team that gave them a chance for a lower salary. As previously mentioned, the draft systems are setup so that a player really does not have a choice on which team can sign him so no specific team really gave them a chance to break into the league (yes, there are some exceptions for undrafted players, but even they deserve to be paid appropriately for their work). When we demand someone to accept a lower salary simply because we want them to be forced to stay with a particular team, we have objectified them.
Just as we are capable of making a sports team into an idol god through the value we place on them, we must be careful not to do the same with professional athletes. We must respect that every professional athlete is a human being and treat them as such.
*There was recently a change in the scheduling of either the NBA or NHL that caused another such day in the winter, but I do not recall if that was done just once or if it is a permanent change.
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