Insane

Tonight I was reading Bill Simmons article on ESPN.com about the Clippers and he mentioned Zach Randolph and his guaranteed $50 million dollar contract over the next couple of years. The thought of that almost made me sick. I’m not saying that because I don’t think he deserves it or whatever, but because it’s just insane how much professional athletes are paid. I’ve played basketball against a few pro athletes like Randolph, Shane Battier and Antwaan Randle El. It boggles my mind to think that guys who I have shared the same court with, who obviously were much better than me, but not so much that I couldn’t at least fit into the flow of the game without embarrassing myself, make millions of dollars just to play a sport. How does that really make sense. It’s not like they are saving the world. I mean, the dumb thing is that most of these guys would play their professional sport for millions less. Hell, if they were paying all the NBA players $50,00-$100,000 a year to play basketball with having all of their food and travel paid for throughout the year, I would imagine you would have a very low percentage of athletes who would turn that down for normal jobs in other professions. 

Obviously, the big name players like Lebron, Kobe and Jordan command more money because they put people in the seats. But did it really ever need to get to so many millions of dollars per player? Pay those guys a percentage of the revenue for their seat filling abilities, but it doesn’t need to be rediculous. I bet the old timer’s like Russell and West survived on what they made. It must make them sick to think how much money they would of made if they were paid like players today are paid. How did it ever get to be so crazy that a guy like Zach Randolph who is pretty good but not even an all-star, is making $14 million a year to play basketball? That’s insane.

This shows how truly obsessed we are about sports. We as fans agree to pay higher and higher ticket prices every year so that teams can pay the players these insane amounts of money. And it’s almost as if we are so brainwashed into thinking that it’s not insane to pay crazy money to watch sports in person that we don’t really question why athletes get paid so much. If i’m a college athlete helping to fill seats, i’m demanding to get paid something!

Anyway, tomorrow i’ll be joining my buddy Migrant in Indy to watch 3 Big Ten tournament games. I’m pretty excited to have something to do on my day off. Hoping for some good games and to get some good pictures. Nice to have something to shoot other than the dogs.