A caller vented about athlete’s salaries and the cost of attending games or even having the subscriptions to watch them on TV, but Boomer and Gio were ready to point out the fault in the argument that athletes are overpaid.
“With the players, they have a specific skill, they are the best in the world at what they do, and they are part of a business that is making more money than you could ever imagine,” Gio said. “They deserve a piece of the pie.”
Gio pointed out how several fans want to see contracts be less guaranteed, so some athletes aren’t being paid millions while sitting on the bench, but what if it were like that at every job?
“Think about your own job if that were the case,” Gio said. “‘OK, everybody gets paid based on their production in every single field,’ and see how you like that…but for whatever reason, the average working person wants athletes to have performance-based contracts. What happens if a player gets injured?”
Sure, there are some exceptions, but overall, athletes work to earn their salary, and the money that the owners and leagues bring in justifies those salaries.
“The NBA players that get paid money and don’t take the regular season seriously…James Harden makes me sick. James Harden doesn’t care about winning a championship, he is just out there because he gets paid,” Gio said. “But the quarterbacks that are making money, Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, all they want to do is win championships, they’re entertaining the hell out of us.”
Another caller pointed out that there never seems to be nearly as much criticism towards what owners make from the athletes’ labor, and Gio said that is a product of athletes’ contracts being such a major part of the sports news cycle.
“We talk about it and see it all the time, and it’s public knowledge,” Gio said. “If it was in the newspaper every day that the owner of this team got that much money…then I think we would talk about it, and fans would get annoyed.”
As for Boomer’s response to athletes being criticized for how much money they make?
“I’d like anyone to stand in the pocket and see what that feels like,” Boomer said.
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