Greed In Sports

I feel that the plantation metaphor still exists in today’s sporting world. Many athletes are pressured into contracts and decision making, that they are not always comfortable with. The way in which they are often pressured into these decision is with the use of money. Owners of major sporting teams are able to control high performance athletes because they are fully aware of the hefty salaries they get paid and that these athletes have become accustomed to a certain type of life style. Owners have so much control over their players that they can be “bought, traded and discarded when used up” with the athlete having no say in the matter (Rhoden, 2006, pg. 240).
In the NBA, there are currently only “19 players on the 2016-17 squad, in addition to the Big Three once you account for the various folks who –through fine print measures in the league’s labor pact – that have the privilege of saying they can’t be traded …show more content…
Owners of NFL teams have “the option to trade with any other franchise unless the player has enough power to put stipulation in their personal contract” (Witt, 2017, NFL Trading Rules). All college athletes when getting drafted into the NFL have no say as to what team pics them. A college football athlete has one of two options. Either they can play for the team that picks them or they don’t play at all. This too shows how not even in the sport of basketball but any sport that there is an ongoing plantation metaphor that still exists.

Citation

Stein, M. (2017, January 28). The 2016-17 NBA All-No-Trade Team. Retrieved October 03, 2017, from http://www.espn.com/blog/marc-stein/post/_/id/4937/the-2016-17-nba-all-no-trade-team

Witt, P. NFL Trading Rules. NFL Trading Rules | Healthfully. Retrieved October 3, 2017, from https://healthfully.com/nfl-trading-rules-6637621.html

Rhoden, W. C. (2006). $40 million slaves: the rise, fall, and redemption of the Black athlete. New York: Crown