Have you ever had the dream about being rich and famous? If you were a professional athlete, you could be very rich and very famous. Right now, Tiger Woods was the highest paid athlete in 2011 totaling over $75 million. If you are good enough, you could make millions a year for playing a sport you are good at and love doing.


I believe that athletes are paid what they deserve and that it is no different than working for a large, money making company. I believe that they deserve to get paid this amount of money because they devote their lives to training and improving at their job.



Athletes who are a valuable asset to their team, get paid more then rookies just coming into the league. If you are a rookie, then you would probably make about $500,000 a year. Once you gain experience, then your pay goes up. It is the same as in a business, if you do well, then you get a raise. If you do badly, then you get fired, or in this case, released.


In Major League Baseball, the highest paid athlete is Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, who in 2007 signed a 10-year, $275 million contract, making $27.5 million per year. However, Alex Rodriguez is far behind the whopping 7.8 billion a year made by Bill Gates.


Athletes get paid a lot of money because the professional sports industry is a huge business with millions of fans going to games each year. Players get most of their money from endorsements and from the fans buying merchandise and going to games. Professional athletes only make about 1% of an organizations total earnings. Some people might say that athletes don't deserve the money they get because they don't work hard for it. I would say that athletes have to deal with injury and fatigue, something that people who work in offices don't have to deal with. Other people might say that it isn't a real job so they shouldn't get paid for playing sports. The only problem with that is how many people go to games or have one hat or something from their favorite team. If you don't like it then stop buying their stuff and spend it on things that are more important to you.


I believe that professional athletes are paid exactly what they deserve. People that are complaining about it in my opinion have bad jobs and aren't as important to the companies of America like professional athletes are. Athletes deserve the money they make because the work hard for it.