Money Ball
I am a huge sports fan, and my sport of choice is baseball. I wanted to find out if team salaries translated into winning championships. Next I found a website on baseball economics 101. At that site I noticed that the player info was a little outdated, but the point is the same. Today if you look at the contract of Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) you would notice that he has a salary reaching a quarter of a billion dollars! Alex Rodriguez makes more money than the Florida Marlins. Now that is an interesting piece of information. One not close to the game of baseball would probally expect the Marlins to be in last place, but that is not the truth, the Marlins are one game over .500 and only a couple games out of the wild card. They are also the hottest team in the league. Teams in the past have won with low salaries like the Oakland A's, Minnesota Twins, and the Florida Marlins. And on the other end of the spectrum there are teams with high salaries that are underachiving like the Giants, Cubs, and Red Socks. Year in and year out the Yankees are in the playoffs, but they have not won in several years. I think it takes more than just abunch of high paid athletes to have a winning team. Sometimes you need the guy that will stick his nose out there for the bettering of the team. If you don't believe me just look at the recent loss of Team USA to the Greek squad who didn't have any NBA stars on their roster.
1 comment:
Again, I completely agree with what was said above. Professional athletics is not for the love of the game anymore. Its more an issue of contracts and money. Yes some athletes who earn the big bucks may love the game, but to many, their first concern is how much they are going to get for themselves. For instance, take Matt Leinart. First round draft pick, just out of college, and won't sign the contract because he wants more money. There are some people out there who would play for nothing. The simple pleasure of playing the sport they love is all they could want. Money doesn't always affect your teams success, as shown above. However, I think that if teams would focus more on the fundamentals and ways of the game instead of legal and financial issues, a lot more people would enjoy these sporting events and in turn, profits would go up.
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