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Task 1: Read the Essay Topic with  Opinion provided for help(you can add more ideas if you wish)

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Task 1: Read the Essay Topic with  Opinion provided for help(you can add more ideas if you wish)

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Article 1: Please read the article for more ideas.

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Wouldn't it be amazing to get paid approximately $50 million dollars a year for simply playing a game? A typical salary for a professional athlete in the United States ranges from 16 million to over 100 million dollars a year. While athletes do hold a special level of skill that the average person doesn't have, there is no question that these athletes are being overpaid, and more important professions aren't getting the pay they deserve.

Professional athletes make way too much money in a country which maintains that people should be paid based on the value of their work and their cruciality to society. Of course, athletes are important because they provide entertainment and leisure time for the average citizen, but compared to professions such as teachers, doctors, and the military, these athletes are getting paid a tremendous amount of money; well out of proportion compared to every other profession.

Golden State Warrior player Stephen Curry and Los Angeles Lakers player Lebron James are both star players in the NBA, with an annual salary above $40 million dollars. Curry's salary is $46 million a year, while James's is $41 million a year. To put that into perspective, the average neurosurgeon's salary in the United States is $633,001 as of Jan. 27, 2022, with a range typically falling between $476,601 and $800,901. Often to achieve these salaries, surgeons have been in practice for more than 20 years.

Neurosurgeons put in countless hours every day working to save and improve the lives of other people. Without neurosurgeons or any surgeon for that matter, people would die and not be able to live the best quality of life possible. So why are the people who are saving peoples lives every day getting paid almost $45 million less a year than professional athletes?

According to Payscale.com , the U.S. Army pays its employees an average of $63,246 a year. Salaries in the U.S. Army typically range from an average of $33,140 to $119,522 a year. U.S. Army employees with the job title Chief Information Officer (CIO) make the most money, and that is still only an average annual salary of $136,309.

Soldiers in the military risk their lives every single day in order for us to have the luxury of attending an NBA or NFL game. These people fight for our freedoms and do so by giving up so much of their own. They have to leave their families for extended periods of time, get put into highly dangerous situations, and often experience both long-lasting physical and mental issues following their service.

Some people may argue that the military doesn't need more pay, considering many of the everyday expenses they have are already paid for. However, this doesn't account for the soldier's family who they still have to support even when they are away on deployment.

The President of the United States is in charge of making decisions that affect the entire world, and he only makes $400,000 a year. While the President is working hard every day to make sure the country is taken care of and governed appropriately, athletes are being paid 150 times as much to play a game that may not even last 2 hours. Stephen Curry gets paid more for playing one game than the President makes in an entire year.

Another profession that is underpaid for the amount of work they contribute to society are teachers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2020 the median pay for a high school teacher was $62,870 annually.

The future of the United States depends on the education of our youth. High school teachers prepare students for life outside of the classroom, and they teach students valuable lessons and skills that they then take with them to pursue professions in many different fields such as medical, law, or the military.

If it wasn't for teachers giving students the knowledge that they need in order to be successful in life and become the future leaders of our country, the United States would go downhill very fast. Yet, a professional NBA player may earn the same amount as the average yearly salary of a teacher when they score a point.

Many families in America live paycheck to paycheck in order to take care of their families and meet their basic needs. It is not fair for these professional athletes to be getting paid so much when there are already so many economic issues between families in America.

These athletes still continued to get paid the same during COVID-19, when they weren't even playing any games, while many families struggled financially when they stopped getting paid or lost their jobs. Those are the people we should be putting money into, not a person whose job it is to simply entertain.

Not only are athletes getting paid millions of dollars an economic issue, but it's also a loyalty and dedication problem. Some players will change teams for an extra million dollars, leaving behind their communities and loyal fans in the process. Lower pay could minimize this issue and make players more loyal to their teams.

There are a wide range of reasons why professional athletes are being paid way too much money and it's important to recognize these reasons and come up with ways to resolve them.

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Opinion: Professional Athletes are Paid Too Much

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Wouldn't it be amazing to get paid approximately $50 million dollars a year for simply playing a game? A typical salary for a professional athlete in the United States ranges from 16 million to over 100 million dollars a year. While athletes do hold a special level of skill that the average person doesn't have,...

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LeBron James. When his name shows up, most people think of the basketball player, but I also think of the role model. Ever since I was a kid, James has been the athlete I looked up to, playing for my favorite team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Being able to witness most of his career, I saw his growth and his philanthropy firsthand.

James' salary is a whopping $44,474,988 and at first glance, you may think that is an exorbitant amount of money for a man that entertains crowds, even if he is one of the greatest of all time. But, he puts that money to good use with the LeBron James Family Foundation and the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, a "Public School dedicated to those students who are already falling behind and in danger of falling through the cracks." Actions like this go far beyond the salary and they impact people's lives forever.

Essentially, pro athletes are paid their fair share, and in some cases are undervalued. For how much they earn their league and owners and how much they contribute to people's lives, athletes deserve to be paid what they are worth.

Home

In the U.S., sports are ingrained into our way of life. We consume sports daily whether it be on the TV, through our phones or in person. Especially post-pandemic, we crave sports more than ever before. Viewership is on the rise and so are the valuations of the leagues and teams - but with that comes a surge in contract numbers. This year alone, four quarterbacks broke the highest-paid QB threshold. It is easy to see how this headline news could skew our opinion of athletes' pay in a negative way but in reality, these big stories are outliers and don't represent the majority of professional athletes.

The starting salary for an MLS player is in the range of $63,547 - $81,375. The median salaries for the NFL and NBA are $860,000 and $3.8 million respectively. The average salary of an MLB player is $4.41 million, while it is around $3 million in the NHL.

Sure, those numbers aren't anything to scoff at, especially for the average salary, but they definitely aren't the $44 million-a-year contracts we see in the news all the time. When you take into account the increasing salary cap across all leagues as well as the value these players provide to their teams, those numbers are what they deserve.

Away

Internationally, the pay system is different within Europe's top five soccer leagues. There is no salary cap, so owners can spend as much as they want as long as they keep within the Financial Fair Play rules set by FIFA. Depending on who owns what team, they can spend a lot of money. But even with all of the oil money floating around, the likes of a Kylian Mbappé contract, a Cristiano Ronaldo contract or a Lionel Messi contract are still vast outliers compared to the average player. For instance, the average salary in La Liga is two million pounds, which is only that high because of how much Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid pay their players. The same could be said about the Bundesliga and Serie A where the average salaries are 1,663,089 euros and 1,894,792 euros, respectively, because of the top few teams in each league.

Another international event is the Olympics. Athletes from all around the world who participate in all different sports work tirelessly for an event that happens once every four years and they barely get paid their fair share. For representing their country on the world's biggest athletic stage, 60% of Team USA's athletes made less than $25,000 a year. This is a prime example of how some athletes are severely undervalued and yet another reason why all athletes can't be bunched in the same group.

Arguably the most humanitarian athlete in the world right now is Sadio Mané. With a salary of 385,000 euros per week or 20 million euros per year, he is one of the highest-paid soccer players in the world. Recently, at the prestigious Ballon d'Or awards, he won the first-ever Socrates award for transforming his home village of Bambali in Senegal. For the population of 2,000 people, Mané built a public hospital and maternity unit which cost 455,000 pounds, a free-to-attend secondary school that provides laptops to the students which cost 250,000 pounds, a gas station and a post office. He installed 4G connection for the rural areas of Senegal while also providing $70 a week to every family to support them.

Once we get past the staggering numbers, there are countless examples of players and organizations giving back in ways that only their salary allows. Even here in Utah, the Jazz have scholarships for students at the University of Utah, which could completely change the trajectory of a student's academic and professional career in an incredibly positive way.

We can't be dissuaded or jaded by the media's coverage of high-profile athletes and their insane outlier salaries. The majority of professional athletes make an honest, well-deserved living, and we shouldn't critique their earnings especially when many use a good portion of their salary for humanitarian endeavors.

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Sports x Opinion: Are Professional Athletes Paid Too Much?

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LeBron James. When his name shows up, most people think of the basketball player, but I also think of the role model. Ever since I was a kid, James has been the athlete I looked up to, playing for my favorite team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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Notes Google Document: 1 article to be read by 1 group & then notes to be presented to the other group:

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Notes Google Document: 1 article to be read by 1 group & then notes to be presented to the other group: