I chose the wrong career

Yup, and the costs incurred by the club owners who pay those absurd salaries eventually gets passed on to the customer Like the saying goes, stuff slides downhill.

I'm also retired from a good career. But I'll tell ya, I think twice these days before rounding up the grandkids for an afternoon's outing at an MLB game-- or any other professional sporting event.

I quit watching football on TV when it took 30 minutes to complete the two minute warning.

I have never watched sports on TV, but I would say the TV stations added in extra times so they could put on more commercials to pay for the high dollar players.

I did decades ago as a grad student in Cleveland when Frank Ryan was quarterback and Jim Brown fullback for Cleveland Browns.

Off season Frank Ryan was getting his PhD in mathematics and retired as a professor of mathematics. Back in those days you did not become wealthy playing football.

If you were to start from scratch today and erase all memory of sports wages, I wonder what the typical pay would be based on skill, educations, etc. . Joe Sixpack works hard for 50k Engineers may hit 100k Doctors can hit 300k Should a ball player make more than 150k? 250k? Are they more valuable than a surgeon?

All of us who subscribe to cable TV pay the insanely inappropriate salaries of these star professional players because the greatest expense the cable companies have is paying the licensing fees to broadcast the games. The cable companies pass those costs along to the subscribers. You pay for ESPN etc. whether or not you ever watch it. That's why I'm in favor of a la carte programming. I don't mind paying for what I watch but I'm really not happy about paying for channels I never watch regardless of whether they're sports, religious, on-line merchandise or any other genre that I never watch.

Speaking as someone who was there, (board certified specialist M.D.) some doctors earn (not bill, earn) well in excess of $300K. I spent all but 2 years of my professional career in the military. Job satisfaction was always more important to me than making more than I needed to pay for food, dwelling, other necessities, occasional vacations, and saving enough to maintain that standard of living in retirement. Fortunately, I found a spouse who shares my values. She turned down tenure-track positions at ivy league universities in favor of being an adjunct because she wanted nothing to do with the publish or perish and the academic political environment that is unavoidable when tenured.

That makes me nearly as happy as knowing that I no longer support Fox News, since I canceled my cable TV about 5 years ago.

I agree on paying for only the chanels I watch. Out of the 500 or so I only watch about 15 or 20 . Most of the time it is even less.

I've never had cable TV. When I travel the cable selections at a motel remind me why.

Yeah, well. I don't make all the decisions in this house. If memory serves, we first got cable in the early 1990s when our rooftop antenna signal was so bad we couldn't tell the humans from the Klingons. It was just a habit for all those years. We cut the cord when the Comcast bill was over $200/month and there was still nothing to watch. Streaming works much better for us.

Yah, I kicked Faux Noise to the curb too.

If you want real news, you need to select a source that is NOT owned by a Blackrock/Vanguard index fund.

On Sunday, December 10, 2023 at 1:46:44 PM UTC-5, Ed P wrote: .

Yes, they are. They make more money for their employer. That's how capitalism works. (well, partly)

Yes, and Joe Sixpack is dumb enough to spend their money to pay for it all.

Nobody is forcing Joe to go to the big pro sports matches. When my son was young, we'd go to the local inter-county ball games < equal to ~ A level > and our admission and the hot dog money and the 50-50 ticket all stayed in the community. Not a bad seat in the small stadium and they really appreciate having some fans in the seats. Same with hockey - Junior B games were just a little more expensive and more crowded. Both were very entertaining ; didn't involve using-up a whole day to do ; nor a terrible 2 hour drive into the big city ; and didn't require a bank loan to pull it off. John T.

I quit watching NFL games when the league allowed players to kneel and disrespect the National Anthem.

Can you imagine a company allowing employees to disruptively express their personal or political opinions on the job during work hours...and especially in front of customers ;-)

I do not know what the ball game tickets are for the regular season games, but did see where the super bowl resellers get a very high price for them. Same for some likr Taylor Swift at a couple of hundred per ticket. Saw the other day where she sold over 1 billion dollars for the last tour.

If that is what people want to spend big bucks for , fine with me. not my money.

I just wish that my wife was not so challenged by TV and such so I could cut the Direct TV money sucking machine. I have to keep things very simple for her.

If you agreed with their position, I'm confident you'd feel differently.

The big thing is that a ball player can entertain 10's of thousands at a time, millions if you count tv.

A surgeon can only operate on one person at a time.

I think TV has been responsible for the biggest increasess in salary, and before that maybe movies.

I think I'd call it free enterprise. Not much capital needed to have a ball team.