Professor von Allmen, an economics professor at Moravian Colleges, concludes, "Most people wouldn't guess that, from an economic standpoint, most professional athletes are underpaid, even the ones who make the most."(Millman) The professor teaches than the difference in their value to the team and the amount of money they receive in their paychecks often contain a large discrepancy. The professor gives the example, "[Michael Jordan] made an enormous amount of money for the people who own the Bulls, much more than they paid him."(Millman) The professor notes t

Most people think that professional athletes are paid just to play a kid's game and when looking at the money aspects of the game they do not look at the requirements of the job. MLB players play a minimum of one hundred and sixty-two regular season games over a seven-month period. Eighty-one of these games are road games and require some form of travel and could require flying to the other side of the country or going to an entirely different country. This means that MLB players are away from home somewhere between a third to over a half of year, depending if they live in their team's home city. Just because they only play for seven-months does not mean that they get the other five months off. Players are required to go to spring training for a month before the season starts and if their team is good enough the post-season could last for another half of a month. Also some of the lower paid players are required to play in a winter league, which pretty much covers their time off. Players also receive no vacation to take a day off during the season just to be with their family. They even have to play over some traditional family holidays. Twenty-eight MLB teams had to play over the Fourth of July in the 2002 season and twenty-eight teams had to play on Easter Sunday in the 2000 season, which is the last time Easter fell during the baseball season. In the NFL, four teams have played on Thanksgiving Day for the last thirty years and in 2000 thirty of the thirty-one teams than had to play within two days of Christmas, with most teams playing on Christmas Eve and two teams playing on Christmas Day. Also consider the player's obligations to their fans, which include attending press conferences, interviews, and going to autograph sessions. These athletes' job is to not only play the game, but to be entertainers also. (ESPN.com)

Another aspect of the controversy is most professional athletes are not paid millions of dollars. One-third of Major League Baseball (MLB) players make the league minimum of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Of the one thousand nine hundred and eighty-one National Football League (NFL) players in 1999, One hundred and thirty-four of them did not make more than sixty-two thousand dollars. One thousand five hundred and eighty-two of them make five hundred thousand dollars or less and one thousand seven hundred and eighty-one make less than a million dol

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1624
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)