With top athletes easily making over tens of millions of dollars a year, a debate on whether athletes are overcompensated has been heating up. Arguing that professional athletes are overpaid, someone I heard said what pro-athletes do is nothing more than entertainment. They do not actually do anything “important” for society and thus shouldn’t be paid absurdly high salaries. After thinking about it, I concluded that it’s a fallacy and wanted to explain why I think that there is nothing wrong with the way athletes are compensated.
It’s hard to define what “importance” actually is. One could argue that the ability to provide entertainment to an entire nation is important. Although certainly not all the time, many athletes can act as good role models for children. But how important athletes are is debatable and the idea that athletes do not provide anything “important” to society isn’t inherently a bad argument. Where, then, do I believe that this argument falls short?
First and foremost is ability. While people in other careers, say, mechanics, require skill and knowledge, the job pays far less than the average NFL player. Why? Because more people are able to become mechanics than are able to play in the NFL.
There are currently more than three-quarter of a million mechanics in the U.S., as opposed to the two thousand or so active NFL players. It is simply harder to play in the NFL than it is to be mechanic, and fewer people are actually able to do so.
While some executives and CEOs do receive ludicrously high salaries, jobs, for the most part, pay on a scale of how many people are able to do them. Because of that, the fact that NFL players make an average of two million dollars a year is fine. Only a tiny percentage of the nation’s population can play in the NFL whereas a much higher percentage can become mechanics.
Despite all of these arguments, none of this really matters. Ultimately, the NFL and all of the companies that endorse athletes, are businesses. A business must make a profit, and if it doesn’t then it must change something.
Nike, Adidas, the NFL, the NBA, all of these companies would not be signing contracts that pay athletes tens of millions of dollars a year if they did not yield results. Because of that, nothing that we say or do is going to stop a company from doing exactly what it should: making money.