Because ppl are idiots.

I guess it is all about consumer demand. Sport is possibly the most watched genre on television, resulting in huge advertising revenues being levied. The sports channels are in competition with each other to provide the best fixtures, and so will pay huge sponsership deals with teams and associations to get their hands on these events. As the money gradually filters down, the players themselves are able to demand larger and larger amounts, knowing clubs require the best players if they are to remain competitive.

I don't like it any more than you do, but it is the way of the world. Convince ten billion people to boycott watching sport on TV and I'm sure you would see the players pay plummet.

Actually, in my language we would pronounce ESPN as ESPEN and that, my dear D’neniel, really IS a boys name

I'm from Italy and I ask myself this same question EVERY single day. Here people are obsessed with football. I live in Milan which, for those who don't know, is the center of the football world in some sense, because of the San Siro stadium.

The reason why those footballers are paid that much, is the same reason why hundreds of people, after their team wins, RUN from Duomo to the Stadium...and when I say run, I do mean run: it's a lot of kilometres...and they run. They're way too enthusiastic to call for a taxi or take the bus. And this happens with minor competitions, because when there are very important matches it's basically impossible for ordinary and rational people like me to go out in Duomo for a walk. People get totally drunk, and everything you can imagine happens.

What I think is really funny about all this, is listening to what those fanatics are screaming outside my window (and anywhere else in the city center): "We won!" ...I mean...what? "We"? What did you do? Did you play? Are you a footballer? Why are you so happy? Are you paid?  What I mean is: I may love, say, Leonardo Di Caprio. If he gets an Oscar, I'm not going on the street screaming "I won an Oscar!" because HE won, not me!

Of course people argue that this is not a matter of sport or football, but just a matter of insanity. Without football, those mad people would certainly find another way of expressing that anger that they have inside. My opinion: why don't they just attend some concerts and scream their heart out? Isn't that more effective? But in the end, until people have this kind of attitude towards football, players will always be paid such an incredible amount of money.

Ah, but soccer - football to the rest of the world outside of my strange homeland - can be an art.  It can be played with grace, and beauty - the team can be like dancers or musicians - It is a place to compete, a place to try your hand at winning, a cause to work at, and an entertainment - 

Really, is it not even a little like reading a great adventure where heroes fight for their cause against all odds?  It is an entertainment that takes people out of their mundane world and shows them a thing to root for, and watching is a vicarious participation - the same way that when I read the Lord of the Rings, I feel the fight and the victory or loss of the characters when I read.

Tolkien said, I think, in "On Fairy-Stories" that reading fantasy is an escape - or a dream of escape - and instead of calling it bad and "escapist" we ought to treat it like the escape of a prisoner of war (whose duty it is to escape) or like the dreams of a prisoner who can't escape yet - no one blames the prisoner for dreaming of escape!

Now not everyone can read easily.  Not everyone likes where fantasy takes them.  But don't those people who can't escape through something like Tolkien still need escape from this world just like we do?  

I said it was like a dance or like musicians, but really, it is like a drama, the games: Like Shakespeare, if you understand the language and the inflections, it is wonderful - if you don't get it, it's boring beyond measure.

Let them be passionate about their sports.  Let them have heroes and representatives who fight on their behalf.  Let them dream of being on the field themselves.  Let them play in the yards and the streets and be friends and be enemies and let them imagine glory and misery beyond their ken.  Let them be lifted higher and sunk lower than their own lives ever go.  Let them remember the great moments together, and the sad moments too, and sing of them, like elves sing of days long past.

Sports can be, in their way, the art appreciated by those who don't know they need art.  Like music, a language that can cross cultural barriers without words.  Like dance, the beauty of bodies trained, hard and well, executing a motion that takes a life to perfect, to practice...

Do they not work hard for their millions?  Let the worker earn his pay, and do not begrudge it.  Who else reaches millions of people, and joins them together in one accord, and brings some such happiness and such joy, and at another time such sorrow?  Who else shows off the rewards of persistence and diligent training so clearly?  Where else can you see courage displayed so large to so many, and virtues and vices played out to their just ends?  What teaches you better about fate, and how it can be changed, and how it cannot be changed?

There is goodness, truth and beauty in sports.  You don't throw out a precious stone because it still resides in a rough and uncut form, do you?  You don't throw out lettuce because it grows in the dirt, do you?

I do understand all the feelings, but really I cannot compare sports at all with Lord of the Rings, for one deals with perfection being marred and the long weary road to recover at least in a tiny measure some of the glorious music with illuvatar. One is about personal pride and adulation of the masses, destruction of property, even murders over scores because someone did not land a ball in the right place or prevent one from going into a net. The other is about life and death, the subjugation of peoples to depraved insane rulers and the courage and majesty of the human soul in fighting that evil. The two don't remotely compare. One is just a high that lasts a couple of heartbeats if things turn out well, the other is a struggle for that which is fine and good and noble year after tiring year, generation after generation. I for one will never understand or appreciate in the most broadest sense the fleeting something that goes with sports and its fans. Not ever. But for those it gives all that wondrous happiness to, i am glad for you.

 

Brego, I couldn't agree more.

When we're talking about sports - I don't see anything wrong with supporting one team or another. When supporting the same team (or not) starts to be a major factor in socializing - that's the only problem for me. I mean - we're all human, we're all seeking acceptance and to be a part of some group, intentionally or not. That's what I see in passionately supporting some sportsmen. Who and how much pays them - this is a whole different story (well, not exactly different since economics is potently dependent on psychology and sociology).