22 million, 48 million, 100 million. These numbers represent the contracts signed yesterday by NFL players Matt Cassel, Brian Dawkins, and Albert Haynesworth. Also yesterday the Dow Jones dropped 119 points and thousands of people lost their jobs. This has become a huge topic of discussion lately. Should athlete be getting paid in the obscene amounts that are given to them?

If we minipulate the figures it looks outrageously unfair. 100 million dollars is enough to fill the wages of over 2000 teachers, 750 doctors, and over 3000 minimum wage workers. The 100 million dollars that Albert Haynesworth will be making over the next 7 years is also just his base salary. He will almost surely make half of this through endorsments, advertisments, and jersey sales. So at the end of the day he will be walking away with a modest salary of 150 million dollars. While the rest of the country is struggling to buy a house, Albert Haynesworth can buy the entire community.

What makes it even worse is that professional athletes only work half of the year. Players basically workout half the year and do nothing the other half except complain that they want a bigger contract. While I understand that players should be making a very nice living 100 million dollars for a half a year job seems a little excessive to me.

Sports weren't always like this. There actually was a time when people played for the love of the game and when going to college before you played pro ball was important because you would need to have a job after you retired. Now that teams so easily give out lucrative contract players are purly motivated by extrinsic incentive. This need to stop. Players need to stop thinking they are above everyone else and actually give back to the fans by taking pay cuts.