Sports, Inequality, and the Downfall of Society

Sports, Inequality, and the Downfall of Society

This woman makes $50,000 annually for educating America's youth

This chubby man makes $31 million per year for grabbing his crotch, chewing tobacco, & occasionally swinging a bat

In 1930, Babe Ruth made $80,000 ($1,124,699.40 in today’s dollars), 6.25% more than the President at the time, Herbert Hoover (who was making $75,000 annually, or $1,054,405.69 in today’s money).  This was a surprising turn of events; a reporter asked Ruth about making more than the President, and he responded with, “Why not? I had a better year than he did."    

Indeed, Ruth, then the most famous athlete alive (with the likely exception of Jack Dempsey, who was able to draw crowds of 85,000, 91,000, and 120,000 people to his fights in the years preceding Ruth’s quote), had a salary roughly 12 times that of the average American income at the time, $6,613.   Noteworthy as well is that the President’s salary was 11.34 times the average income.  For comparison’s sake, in 2012, the President’s income was $400,000, and the average American salary was $42,693, (thus the President’s salary was 9.36 times that of the average American salary).  Also for comparison’s sake is the contract extension Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers signed today, for eight years and 248 MILLION DOLLARS, which comes out to $31 million per year. 

Over the course of an average season, which features 607 at bats, Cabrera will be earning $51,070 per at bat (and for the record, I hate myself for reading even one word about baseball, the least exciting “sport” ever invented).  The average first-year teacher earns $36,141.  Each Cabrera at bat is worth considerably more than a year of someone struggling to teach our children how to read, do math, learn about science, history, art, and write.  Mr. Cabrera’s salary is 77.5 TIMES that of the President of the United States, and 726.11 times that of the average American salary (using the 2012 numbers). 

I bring up these staggering figures not as a critique of the Detroit Tigers or Cabrera, but for two separate but important reasons.  Firstly, these numbers serve as another measure of the gap between rich and everyone else in this country, and secondly, to highlight the perverse relationship America has with its athletes. 

Starting with the former, discussion of the increasing gap between the (shrinking) middle class and the uber-rich is nothing new.  By now, everyone who cares about such things is well aware of the dearth of manufacturing jobs, the increased power of the .1% of the country, the ways in which Citizens United promotes the circumvention of the intent of democracy, the massive income and wealth disparities that plague our country, and the lack of social mobility which threatens this country’s ethos and future. 

The second point is less discussed, but perhaps at some point soon, that tacit silence will change.  Sports, like religion, are an opiate for the masses.  Anyone who has had to suffer the fate of listening to sports talk radio knows how insufferably dumb and emotional maniacal sports fans become when discussing “their” teams.  There is a difference between enjoying sports and letting sports take over one’s life, much like religion can be (theoretically) good in small doses, but in large doses, proves to be destructive.

At the current juncture, there is a détente between sports lunatics (fans, if you will) and the athletes.  Due to fantasy sports, people are able to feel as though they have some skin in the game, even while not playing.  Between “owning” players and cheering for “your” team, sports provide a nice vacation from real life.  In return for providing this escapism, fans are willing to simply accept that professional athletes deserve to be paid absolutely outlandish sums of money, which come from even richer team owners. 

Sports are the lowest common denominator; the only topic about which the doorman and the doctor feel comfortable discussing is the football game from the previous weekend.  This role as an important spoke in the societal wheel leads to the aforementioned tacit silence as it pertains to criticizing player salaries.  In my view, this uncritical jock-sniffing has a negative impact on society.  The decision to put athletes on a pedestal, and the pervasive saturation of sports in our already shallow culture, create a ripple effect.  Young kids, particularly those at risk and without strong support systems, easily fall into the trap of believing that they are destined for athletic success, and that playing on a team is the ultimate goal, rather than getting one’s degree.  Our propensity towards athlete hero worship means that the teacher working to educate is thought of as a lesser being than the running back.  If our kids believe that the sports world is just as important as the real world (where sadly 99.9999% of us work and reside), then schoolwork does not in and of itself have any more value than sports.  In effect, we are creating a nation of kids growing up watching ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN 360, FOX SPORTS 1, NBC SPORTS, etc etc., who believe that the breaking news bulletin on the bottom of the screen during Sportscenter is somehow something of import.