by Chris Hester

Created on: December 02, 2008

Football players have the opportunity to play a game that many of us grew up playing. These few players have been given the chance to play America's game as their profession. The majority of these players have dedicated their lives to the game, played not only through high school but at the colligate level too before earning the opportunity to go pro.

There are many people who dream of being a professional athlete but most of us received a reality check at an early age, realizing that we don't have the right genetics to make a career out of it. Many who would rather play sports instead end up in careers such as a nurse, police officer, of fire fighter. All of these professions are needed for our society to survive but not one of them makes an average income over 100k.

The average NFL player made 1.4 million dollars in 2006. To many of us this is absurd. We could only imagine what life would be like with that kind of income. However the average salary for a football player is low compared to the other sports. The average baseball player made 2.8 million dollars in 2007 and the average basketball player made 4.9 million dollars in 2007. Football players do make a lot of money throughout their career but the game is very physical and demanding compared too many other sports that average more money than what football players make.

Why do football players make so much money? When you look at the salaries football players make it does seem high, but when you factor in the amount of revenue they make for their franchise and the league, the high salaries even out. Football is America's game! Many of us spend Sunday afternoons in a stadium watching our home team or on the couch flipping the channel from game to game. Each franchise sells hats, shirts, and jerseys all year long. Football is a sport that brings in very large revenue year after year. With all the money coming in the teams can afford to compensate their players with a nice size salary.

There are a lot of top level player that have multi-million dollar contracts each year, but many of these players give a lot of that money back to their local communities and a variety of charities. These guys deserve the money that they earn by putting their bodies on the line each and every week to entertain the rest of us and then they are willing to donate money to the community. My hat is off to these players.

The real question should not be are football players under paid, but should people with careers such as the military be paid more? While athletes entertain us each week, the majority of the military personnel earn less than 50k per year. These are the people that risk their lives each and every day, making sure we have the ability to enjoy our freedom. Maybe these guys should get a nice size salary increase because without them, none of us would have the opportunity to enjoy playing or watching football.

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