Sunday, April 18, 2010

Why Greed is Vital in Professional Sports

My buddy Shoe wrote on his blog a quick article about how blooming Cowboys receiver, Miles Austin deserves a raise: http://shoeler.blogspot.com/2010/04/miles-austin-deserves-raise.html

This got me to thinking... what if Austin takes the same salary?

By taking the smaller salary on purpose, he would allow the Cowboys more funds to bring more talent to their roster. Imagine if this caught on and attracted more and more pro-bowlers who all end up taking pay cuts and playing on the same team. This leads to a talent-stacked team that could win a championship with ease. Heck, the endorsements for this dream team might even be enough to cover the pay cut.

Not even just football, but basketball, baseball, hockey, and pretty much every team-sport is susceptible to this loophole.

At first this sounds like a good thing, but if we think about it a little further, a move like this could destroy professional sports as we know it. After all, it takes away one of the most entertaining aspects of professional sports: competition. This monopolistic team (*cough* U-Conn *cough*) would destroy all challengers with ease, which in turn would destroy all entertainment with ease.


(This team has been destroying what microscopic value of worth women's basketball had.)



It's critical that both players continue to seek out the highest contract possible and teams continue to give contracts that match their talent. Once someone realizes how simple it is to create a monopoly in professional sports, it's all downhill from there, and it's interesting to think about how the league will react to it.

Seeing the troubles of a monopolistic team may be obvious but the scary thing is even the "experts" can't see what's wrong with it: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&page=wojciechowski/100223&sportCat=nba

2 comments:

  1. There's not a salary cap in baseball, so it wouldn't work there.

    The only problem I see is that a championship, no matter how stacked a team can be, isn't a sure deal. Especially with football.

    And endorsements aren't necessarily a sure thing. Not every athlete has a face for selling a product.

    exhibit a: http://www.wearethepostmen.com/wp-content/uploads//2008/07/handsome-alexander-ovechkin.jpg

    you still have a valid point.

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  2. even if there's no salary cap, money is still finite so if a player takes a cut there's still more money to be offered.

    and yeah you're right about the endorsements thing but i only proposed that as a possible remedy for the pay-cuts. championships will probably satisfy a lot of players anyway

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