Impact of Professional Athletes Large Salaries on Sports - Research Proposal Example

Order 309115 Topic: Have the large salaries of professional athletes had a negative impact on the athletes or the sports? Introduction: "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them". (Quote Act II, Scene V.) The top athletes belong to the second category. For every ounce of success, they have to work hard. Athletes do not exert to earn money; they do so to excel in their chosen field. Getting money is a consequential action. The salary factor will influence professional athletes. But they also work for a cause. For individual name and fame, and for the glory of the nation to which they belong! The salaries and perquisites they receive have nothing to do with their great craze for achievements. Some people are bad; similarly some athletes may be bad. Their salaries have nothing to do with their conduct and moral character. Some of the highly paid athletes are philanthropists. a. The study objectives. Why this study is necessary and important. The objective of this study is to remove the misnomer from the minds of the common man that large salaries of professional athletes has a negative impart on the sports. Every mind-level argument has the counter-argument, and it can go on and on, like two lawyers contesting a case in a court of a law. Each one of them wishes to win the case. In the course of arguments, many a times, the essential issues are side-tracked, and the non-essentials come are given importance. How can the large salaries of professional athletes have negative impact on the sports? Such athletes are paid, huge salaries for the simple reason that the paying party has the wherewithal to pay it. Sports activities in the present times are run like business organizations. Public relations exercises are carried with the express objective to increase the profits. Money is what money does! Well said! The salaries confer on the athletes’ celebrity status and privileges. With the power of money, they are able to engage the famous attorneys and get serious charges against them like assault, drug abuse, rape etc. dropped. The children get wrong signals, which otherwise do hero worship of such famous athletes. In the formative stage of their life, children come to believe that with the power of money one can turn anything in one’s favor. The fan-following of the athletes goes crazy and are too forgiving of the wrong actions of their sports heroes. The parents also fail to gauge the situation in its correct perspective. Parents want their children to become outstanding sports persons, enamored by the belief that huge money lies in sports careers. They make all-out efforts, fair and unfair, to make their children reach the top slots in league matches, which they believe, will eventually take them to celebrity status. If one makes attempt to take correct stock of the situation, compare it to a scale of justice, where both arms of the scale are equally important, to enable one to strike the correct balance. Positive and negative impacts are like the alternative beats of the same heart. The poor amongst the younger generation get great inspiration when an athlete from the poor family rises to become a star athlete. But it is an unverified assumption that top athletes come from poor families. Incidentally, 67 percent of America’s poor are white. Such children feel that they too can reach the ivory tower of name, fame and money to become millionaires. What is wrong in such honest ambitions and if one makes efforts with great determination to reach the top slot? Why athletes and sportspersons alone need to be singled out in the matter of comparison of salaries? A pilot in the Airlines gets a much higher pay-packet than an ordinary worker at the lower level. No use comparing the emoluments of a high ranking athlete with that of the salary of a teacher. Both are carrying out their respective responsibilities, and nobody has prevented a teacher from turning out to be a millionaire athlete. In life, everyone gets what one deserves! Even in the same category of the profession, it is wrong to do comparison on the basis of monetary returns. One painting may not sell for $ 100, whereas another painting sells in the auction for $1,000,000! This backgrounder information makes it possible for assessing the ground realities properly. One can not put artificial barriers and ceilings on the emoluments of the top athletes. That is against the principle of individual freedom and one’s essential dignity. There is no alternative but to run sports on business lines. The role of the press and TV channels that make super heroes of sportspersons needs, however, needs to be re-assessed. Unnecessary hype is created, and the children are excited and see many heroic qualities in the athletes, which are actually not there. It is natural for the athlete to earn as much as possible, when the time favors one, as one does not remain in the same form and frame of physical fitness through out one’s life. An athlete has a limited number of years of competitive sports in one’s lifespan. The earnings must be sufficient for one’s maintenance during one’s retired life. So, an honest appraisal of the issue is necessary. It is important to correctly assess the implications of large salaries of professional athletes-whether they have positive or negative impacts on the sports. Null Hypothesis: The large salaries of professional athletes have nothing to do with the negative impact on the sports. Hypothesis: The negative impact on the sports is due to the large salaries of professional athletes. d. The variables that will be used to measure to complete the study. Is there a tangible solution and to improve the situation? Let us proceed by studying some benefits the professional athletes get as compared to other professions. These figures are realistic assumptions, bordering truth. Basket Ball Player: $ 2.5 million Base Ball Player: $ 1.5 million Cricket Payer $ 1.5 million Hockey Player $ 1 million Foot Ball Player $ 1 million Teachers $ 45,000 Firefighters $ 40,000 Police Officers $ 30,000 e. Potential group of people that is used as participants in the study. Now, let us make a frank assessment of the issue. How many athletes reach the top slot and make super earnings? One can count them in fingers. The number of Police Officers and Teachers are in many thousands. So, such comparisons are inapt. One can not dismiss the issue by saying that a sport is mere entertainment and therefore high salaries are unjustified. In this stressed world, deeply impacted by industrialization and internet revolution, entertainment is the soothing balm that restores balance in the psyche of humanity. Putting ceiling on the ticket prices will be counter productive as tickets may be sold in black market, giving rise to another social evil. So, athletes are worth the payment they receive. Sports are organized businesses. Having said this, if the sports fans are willing to pay for the highly priced tickets to watch the games, they can not be prevented from doing so legally. Why compare the top athletes with teachers and policemen? Compare them to the movie stars and advertisement models. Many movie stars take $20 to 25 millions per movie. No rules by the regulating or government authority are likely to succeed in curbing the salaries of professional athletes. The flat assumption that it has a negative impact on the athletes or the sports is also not tenable. Special skills of the players over which the spectators go crazy, fetch millions of dollars for the team owners. Such owners rightly exploit all the avenues of advertisements like television rights, sale of caps, key rings, T-shirts, souvenirs etc. apart from the ticket sales. How anyone can decide that the players are not worth the sums they get? The comparison of salary scales of teachers, firefighters, or for that matter even that of the President of the United States may be less than the earnings of a top athlete, are logically wrong. When it is agreed that sports is an organized business, the only theory that will work is the supply and the demand theory. The best players are in demand. So, they need to be paid the best salaries. If society likes such entertainment and is willing to pay, no one should think of stopping it. “Sports has clearly become one of societys broadest cultural common denominators. We see more in our newspapers about sports than we see about world or national news, the arts, culture; we turn on the local television at night and see more TV sports news than the similar things; when we turn on the television on the weekend, the tube is glutted with sports entertainment, not to mention all-sports network.”(Lapchick, 1997) f. Three keywords that could be used to search for literature that relates to the topic. Professional athletes, High salaries, Sports entertainment ========== Works Cited: Lapchick, Richard. Article: Professional Sport and Public Behavior. Presented to the Penn National Commission in December of 1997: Retrieved on July 7, 2009 Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night, Quote Act II, Scene V. . Read More