Professional Athletes

Stan Taylor (football star): … Ned Flanders saved me. I used to party all night and sleep with lingerie models until Ned and his bible group showed me that I could have more.
Homer: [murmuring] Professional athletes, always wantin' more...
-The Simpsons

We hate professional athletes because of their greed, but really we all want to be them.  Who wouldn't?  They get paid to play a game.  They make far more than most Harvard graduates who studied every Saturday night for doing basically what elementary schoolers do at recess.  Then, while they argue $19 vs. $20 million on their contract we're hating our job pushing papers of sweeping buses or whatever and would kill to just sit the bench for even a tenth of what they make (though we still go back and watch them week after week).

I've heard theories explaining the phenomena of wanting the extra million when you're already set up for fifty as that the athletes are different people than us.  For most of us there's a diminishing marginal return of utility on each extra dollar of income.  Athletes (and people like them) actually instead get increasingly excited with each dollar.  Maybe that's just fancy talk for "greedy".  It’s a pretty abstract theory and I don't know if I should believe it.  What I do doubt is if their value to society is reflected in their paychecks.  I don't see anything inherent in sports as a profession that would mean the athlete deserves millions of dollars.  On a side-rant, the same goes with pop music-stars...I be crying for anyone who can't buy ten cars or a phat crib because CD sales are lagging.  Aren't artists supposed to be stereotypically starving, anyway?  Oh well, with music and sports I suppose this is the wage our market economy has settled on, and far be from me to argue a better way of determining wages.  And hey, this society really likes its sports.

Now let me defend the athletes on, although a trivial point, a pet peeve of mine none the less.  I hate it when somebody says, "That guy/team sucks!"  No, they don't suck.  They're actually very good.  Maybe they're “relatively less gifted” than those that win the Super Bowl, or even those that have winning records, but they're still good enough to get paid millions just to play a game.  Tens of thousands come to see them play and millions watch them on TV.  No one cares about you sitting in your living room eating Fritos in your dirty t-shirt, and with your beer belly who are you to talk anyway?  Growing up back in their hometown they undoubtedly dominated the field and were the MVP every year and dated all the pretty cheerleaders.  Honor students moved out of their way in the halls.  All the middle-aged men who peaked in high school would stand around at their games drinking coffee and cheering loudly for them.  All the old men townies would say to each other "There's never been one like him in Podunk".  Now, you don't become suckier going from Nowhere-ville jock-god to the NFL.  OK, they don't suck.  What if you found yourself against someone you called “sucky” at a pickup game down at the park?  Dude, they'd walk all over you.