The first athlete paid to play football was Pudge Heffelfinger in 1892 when he was paid $500 to play for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. In baseball the first professional team was founded in 1869 and they were called the Cincinnati Red Stockings and they earned a salary for an eight month season. In the early days of professional sports athletes were paid very little sometimes far less than regular jobs, but because of gambling athletes had to be paid more to preserve the integrity of the game. In the beginning of professional sports a group of gamblers or even the mob would approach athletes who were in a position to change the outcome of a game and offer them a large sum of money to lose the game. Many times the athlete would take the money because they didn’t get paid that much money, an example would be the Black Sox Scandal.
Once professional sports started to earn a lot of money they realized that they had to pay the athletes a lot of money in order to keep them from taking bribes. Baseball players in the 30’s and 40’s like Lou Gehrig and Joe Dimaggio were paid $20,000 to $40,000, NBA players in the early 80’s like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were paid $500,000 to $800,000. Moses Malone signed the first NBA million dollar contract in 1979, Bobby Hull signed the first million dollar NHL contract in 1976, Nolan Ryan inked the first million dollar contract in baseball in 1979, and Bruce Matthews became the first million dollar man in 1983. NASCAR drivers were first paid in 1948 and in the early 70’s NASCAR and its drivers were given a huge financial boost through cooperate sponsors whos names appeared on the race cars and the driver’s suits.
Sources: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1938&t=NYA
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_was_the_first_NBA_player_to_earn_a_million_dollars_a_year_in_salary
Sources: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1938&t=NYA
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_was_the_first_NBA_player_to_earn_a_million_dollars_a_year_in_salary
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ReplyDeleteIt’s outrageous that a baseball player, a hockey player, and a basketball player make more money than our president, who runs the country. There's little doubt that the National Football League is presently king among American professional sports. While balanced atop its throne, the league annually collects a generous revenue stream of no more than $6 billion each year from television contracts to tickets and merchandise sales, among other things. Thanks to the annual increase in the NFL player salary cap, most teams enter a new fiscal year with extra money to spend, and that's great news for the NFL players. Imagine for a moment if the company that you work for had a policy similar, each franchise is required to spend at least 84 percent of the cap each year. This is one reason a lot of money gets tossed into fat new NFL contracts for players, many with marginal ability, each year. It's a no brainer that college players are anxious to get into the pros. From an art perception it is engaging to watch a game. Its brings the community together and its great entertainment.
ReplyDeleteGreat topic! I had this quesiton when i was in school and it was extra credit question that which soprt players get paid most i personaly wrote football but i was wrong because baseball players do. Reason for that is they have longer contract so they get paid more but i never knew about bribing but know but now i know.
ReplyDeleteAny good example that i can think of is philies Ryan Howard just signed a five year contract for 56 million now thats something. Great work and nice tipic once again.
Salaries in professional sports are a heated debate in today’s economical crisis. Yankees spend around 700 million dollars after free agent players this off season. They also build new stadium worth 1 trillion. In this economical crisis professional teams are spending so much money after players. It has gotten out of hand the amount of money is being given to players. Alex Rodriguez is making 25 million dollars per year for next 10 years. In NBA, Kevin Garnett is making around 30 million per year. Lebron James is going to be a free agent next year, this number will be increased at least 10 million. Compared to these sports I like NFL because of their salary cap. But even with salary cap Albert Hanyeworth got 100 million for 7 years. So these amounts are growing each year by a huge margin. We have to put a stop to this. This numbers are absolutely ridiculous to be given to one player. This number is sure to hike up every year. In this economic situations, we cannot afford to spend this much money after players. There has to be a limit where every contract has to stop. This is getting out of our hand. People have fun watching the game and reading the news but now they are going to have to do something. This is a excellent topic. Today in every news channel they are debating about this topic.
ReplyDeleteWell the pay scales of athletes have definitely grown a lot faster then they did before 1976. If the first million dollar contract was signed that year, that means that only 23 years have passed and some athletes salaries have more then tripled that amount.
ReplyDeleteI do understand now why athletes have to be paid well in order to avoid the bribes and to keep the games fair, but I don't think they need to be paid as much as some of them are being paid. Not only do today's athletes receive a salary, some also receive endorsements which pay a lot of money.
Its unfathomable to think about how these players can make this kind of money just for doing something that they have such a passion for. i second adit's comment about the Yankees salaries. I am a yankee fan, and i still find it obscene how much A Rod gets paid a year to play baseball. If you think about how much money that is compared to the single mom working two jobs just to support her children, it seems so unfair.
ReplyDeleteAlthough i agree with some things said its not unthinkable that these players make so much money. We the people and fans pay good money to see sports. The players are only partly to blame however. If we did not pay so much to see them play and we did not care about these "games" as much they would not get as much money.
ReplyDeleteON another note the reason arod and many other baseball players have such high paid saleries is due to the soon to be retired president oh the players union donald feir. His salary was based on the average of all mlb players. So is it really a wonder why they get so much?
Very timley, with the world the way it is today the amount paid to pro sports players is incredible. Todays the owner of the Texas Rangers had to play off workers but was still paying he players millions
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show you that as long as we fans are willing to buy what they sell they will continue to rake in the $$$.
The amount of money that NFL rookies make is ridiculous. Stafford got a contract with 41.7 million guaranteed. Thats more than ay player in the history of the NFL and the kid has never even played a single down. For all we know he could be the next Jamarcus Russel or Ryan Leaf
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