To Pay or Not to Pay?

     The term “economics” is a word that seems very wide open. It has to do with money and finances but can relate to anything that occurs in our everyday lives. One of the more notable and even recent topics in economics has two key parts: equal pay in sports, as well as collegiate athletes being compensated being paid for participation in athletics from within their university.

            The first part of economics to bring up is equal pay in sports. It is a hard topic to discuss because of the number of athletes we have participating in sports, as well as being paid because of their talent level. The top 10 athletes in the world are as follows, according to Forbes: Barcelona star soccer player Lionel Messi at $127 million, Juventus star forward Cristiano Rinaldo at $109 million, Paris Saint-Germain star forward Neymar at $105 million, star UFC boxer Canelo Alvarez at $94 million, star tennis player Roger Federer at 

$93.4 million, Seattle Seahawks star quarterback Russell Wilson at $89.5 million, Green Bay Packers star quarterback Aaron Rodgers just behind Wilson at $89.3 million, LA Lakers star player LeBron James at $89 million, Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry at $79.8 million and Curry’s former teammate Kevin Durant, who is now a player on the Brooklyn Nets at $65.4 million.

            These athletes just mentioned are all star players in their own respective sport. However, a lot of other players that play in the same sport as most of these athletes want to be paid around the same amount and even more eclipsing some of these star contracts. Major League Baseball players are starting to request to be paid more. For example, star outfielder Bryce Harper signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with no opt-outs throughout the duration of his contract. There are other athletes coming up during this MLB offseason that are either unrestricted free agents with their contracts ending, like Houston Astros star pitcher Gerrit Cole, whose contract just ran out this season and also World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg, who opted out of a contract with 4 years/$100 million remaining to seek a deal that pays quite a bit. “No player is worth that much money like the contract Bryce Harper signed,” a fellow baseball fan said.

Now that is not to say these all these athletes mentioned are not talented. They absolutely are some of the most talented individuals in their sport. However, there are some that play outstanding in their sport that are not paid like some of these star athletes that really want to be paid a lot. This topic has created quite a controversy both in the sports world and politically and it has to do with women not being paid up to the level as these male athletes. Abby Wambach, star player for the United States Women’s Soccer Team, has continuously voiced her opinion saying women need to be paid more than they are currently being paid because of their talent level. Other athletes, including Washington Wizards star players John Wall and Bradley Beal, are calling for women to be paid more. Wall and Beal were in attendance during the Washington Mystics WNBA Final title runs and they both witnessed firsthand how talented these players on the Washington Mystics rosters are.

I feel that if athletes are performing at a high level for their team, then absolutely, they deserve to get paid. However, it really should not be in these ridiculous amounts some of these other athletes have signed contracts, like Harper and Machado for example. In 2012, the Los Angeles Angels were one of the first teams in all of sports to sign a player to a crazy contract. Longtime first baseman and future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols signed a 10 year/$240 million contract and so far, he has not really lived up to it because of him not being healthy throughout the duration of his contract, but that has to do a little bit with him approaching 40 years old. On top of that, the Angels have not really been a competitive team, but they will go into next season under high expectations to compete and in order to do that, they need to pay some players on the free agent market that can help them make their team better. Bottom line, think long and hard about a particular player and their overall talent level before you “back the Brinks truck up”.

            Moving on to another topic relating to economics in sports: the compensation of college athletes. It has been a huge argumentative topic for many years that can really be argued whether college athletes should be compensated or not for playing a collegiate sport. According to NPR, it was just recently announced that the NCAA would be compensated for using their name and image for collegiate athletic participation. One former player that says that college athletes should not be compensated in any way: former Florida Gators star quarterback Tim Tebow, who played quarterback years ago and was a very talented player in his own right also. On an interview with ESPN’s  “First Take” recently, Tebow stated his jersey was one of the top selling jerseys in sports and didn’t want to be compensated for it because just the overall experience of being in college and playing college football made him feel great and gave him such motivation to be successful. He also says it is all about the team and not yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKpm4jwMi8o 

            The topic of students being paid is an ongoing topic at universities around the country, but the question is, is it significant here at George Mason University? Ronald Shayka, the Associate Athletic Director at Mason, says that this entire topic has not been a huge discussion so far but can be down the road depending on how the media frames it. He added that if athletes become paid to play in their respective sport, then they will become “employees” of their respective university. If you think about it that way, then absolutely, paying an athlete will make them an employee of the university, so that is definitely something to consider down the road.  "I believe paying student athletes is even more drastic and may be the first step of bringing the whole house down,” Shayka said.

In my opinion, I think it is crazy for a university to even think about paying athletes for playing a sport while attending school. The schools should stick to improving classrooms and paying professors for doing one of the hardest jobs out there in the world today. You can argue that a scholarship is actually paying someone and when you think about it, it sort of does fall under that category. However, it is for a reward for doing hard work throughout your education, so that should stay the way it is. Shayka also stated if a university pays an athlete, then actually awarding an athlete a scholarship can be delayed because of the compensation of an athlete. In the end, schools need to focus on bringing in athletes that are going to graduate.

In my eyes, I think overpaying athletes is a huge issue when it comes to economics in sports, so be careful with the amount of money you spend on an athlete. In regard to paying student-athletes, stick to the scholarships. The main reason why someone attends a university is because they want to graduate and get a degree, not only to play sports.

External Links
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2019/09/13/college-athletes-tim-tebow-speaks-out-against-paying-players/2312200001/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/student-athletes-should-get-paid-college-students-say.html
https://www.marca.com/en/football/barcelona/2019/06/11/5cffe3d3ca4741537d8b4574.html

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Deja Vu?

We are only one month into the 2019 MLB season and the Washington Nationals, in many people's eyes, were expected to be a very dominant team with free agent acquisitions, players returning and whatnot. Even with the loss of Bryce Harper, they were expected to compete.

Let's just say it has pretty much been the complete opposite of that. Injuries have plagued the Nats. Star shortstop Trea Turner has already been out for a month with a broken index finger, Anthony Rendon with elbow issues, face of the franchise Ryan Zimmerman with nagging foot issues and now to add it all, lost two key players, Matt Adams and Michael A. Taylor last night, and now Taylor is the latest Nat to go on the injured list.

It gets even worse for Washington. They were expected to be more competitive with their star pitchers, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and newcomer Patrick Corbin and of course, some really key bullpen pieces. To say their bullpen has been a dumpster fire has been an understatement to say the least. They have cost the Nationals a pretty good amount of wins so far this season and with all the pitching issues, it also cost the Nats' pitching coach their job earlier this week.

We will see if there are other changes on the horizon, but I'm sure if the struggles continue, we will definitely see more changes in the Washington Nationals organization.

More Shockers

After winning the best-of-7 series against the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, the Carolina Hurricanes advanced to play the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup Semifinals. The Islanders, led by former Capitals Stanley Cup winning head coach Barry Trotz, many were to say the Islanders would give the Canes trouble because of their coach and veteran leadership.

It was all but that. The first two games were relatively competitive. The Islanders had home-ice advantage for the entire series, but both home games were stolen by Carolina. Game was was scoreless throughout regulation, then Carolina goes on and scores the lone goal in that game, winning 1-0 in overtime. In Game 2, the game was tied for a good chunk of the way, until Carolina scores in the third period winning 2-1.

Games 3 and 4 shifted down to Raleigh, NC. If the Caps struggled because of PNC Arena's loud atmosphere, how would the Islanders take it? The answer: not so well. It honestly looked like another version of the Capitals playing down there, with loud arena fueling the players. Ironically, games 3 and 4 both ended in 5-2 victories for Carolina, which was also the same scored in Game 6 in the Capitals series.

Nevertheless, Carolina advances, sweeping the series against the Islanders 4-0 and will take on the winner of the Boston Bruins/Columbus Blue Jackets series, where the winner will be declared the Eastern Conference champion and will advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

There's A First Time For Everything

Let's go back in time, particularly to the early 1900s and before then. Women didn't play much of a role, expect for being housewives and mothers. 100 years later, women are now being represented more and more in jobs, especially in a league that is predominantly ruled by men.

There are two notable women that recently made history. Melanie Newman and Suzie Cool are the radio play-by-play and color announcers for the Salem Red Sox, the Advanced-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. They made history by being the first women to do both duties in the radio booth in all of professional baseball. There are still women that work in various roles in other organizations but these two are part of a really special type of history. Last Tuesday, I had the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview both of them for the NBC affiliate in Boston, as well as for NBC4 here in DC. 

They are both still relatively young and just starting the opening stages of their careers. They both had really good stories and show really great passion for the game of baseball not only in their careers, but also in their personal lives. I wish them nothing but the best and hope this takes them farther into their careers for years to come!

Defending Champs Go Down

What do you think of when you hear the words "Game 7"? Are you excited, stressed, a little bit of both? For most Capitals fans, hearing those words more than likely stresses them out.

After leading the first round series against the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0, then losing 2 in a row in Carolina, winning Game 5 at home in dominating fashion, then losing in Carolina AGAIN, the Caps went into Wednesday's Game 7 hoping for the Capital One Arena faithful to give them a spark leading into the next series against former coach Barry Trotz and the New York Islanders.

After a pretty dominating 1st period leading 2-0 and then leading 3-1 for part of the 2nd period thanks to the first goals of the series by star players Andre Burakovsky and Evgeny Kuznetsov, Carolina rocked the Caps like a hurricane, scoring 3 unanswered goals and ended up winning the game and the series 4-3 in double overtime on a Brock McGinn goal and the Carolina Hurricanes advanced to the second round against the Islanders, while the Caps were eliminated in the first round for the first time in a few seasons.

We will see if the Caps can rebound and have better success next year, but it looks like the Carolina Hurricanes are an up and coming team for years to come.

Big Sparks

After a tough two games in Raleigh, NC, the Caps came back to Capital One Arena last night hoping their fans would power their confidence towards a victory after the Carolina Hurricanes, who haven't hosted and even been in the playoffs since the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, absolutely dominated the defending champs in their home arena.

Reports over the weekend came out that TJ Oshie will miss the remainder of the Stanley Cup Playoffs after undergoing surgery to repair a broken collarbone. That didn't stop the star player from cheering on his team from outside the arena, tweeting to his fans to be loud and root on the home team.That motivation from Oshie seemed to really help the Caps and their fans.

The player that took Oshie's spot on the roster was Devante Smith-Pelly, one of the heroes from the Stanley Cup run last year. He made his return to the lineup for the first time since February, after being sent down to the AHL because of somehow struggling this season. That was another sort of a spark.

Spoiler alert: with both of those things mentioned, the Caps really played a dominating game in their return home last night, winning by a 6-0 score. Nicklas Backstrom was a big reason for the win, scoring the Caps' first 2 goals and assisting on 2 more.

Game 6 will take place tomorrow night back in Raleigh. Let's hope the Caps can close it out. Otherwise, they will be back here Wednesday night for Game 7.

Struggling Champs

After winning the first two games at home, the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes moved down to Raleigh with the Caps up 2-0 in this best-of-7 series. After a 10-year drought without playoff hockey in the Carolinas, the crowd at PNC Arena at Raleigh was expected to be loud. Well, it was just that and then some.

After sweeping the regular season series from Carolina 4-0 and winning these first two playoff games in DC, momentum was expected to be in the Caps favor shifting to another location, due to their extensive history of playoff experience. It looked like the complete opposite of that. Game 3 was absolutely dominated by the Hurricanes by a 5-0 shutout led by two goals apiece from third year player Warren Foegele and veteran Dougie Hamilton, along with a very underwhelming 18 shots by the Caps, in which all of them were saved by goalie Petr Mrazek.

After Game 3, the Caps had two days off between games. The first day off, they didn't even hit the ice, which was a good thing for the team to recharge their batteries for a day before hitting the ice for practice the next day in preparation for Game 4.

Speaking of Game 4, the Capitals played a lot better than Game 3, but still struggled a little bit. The aforementioned Warren Foegele scored only 17 seconds into the entire game, then Caps Captain Alex Ovechkin scored to tie it in the second and then at the end of the second period, Carolina took the lead and never looked back, winning 2-1 and evened the series 2-2 going back to DC. It also got even worse for the Caps, as star right winger TJ Oshie broke his collarbone in the 3rd period of Game 4 and will miss the remainder of the playoffs.

Stay tuned for a recap of Game 5.