Athletes: The Human Goods

We all sell ourselves, and do not take it the wrong way, but except for the exceptions that confirm the rule (and that I don’t even know) we all have a price for almost everything, they say that money does not make happiness, but IF YOU BUY IT! Sport is no exception, it is said that in the ancient Greek Olympiad they competed with dignity and for the highest honor of succeeding representing their nations, but even there there was the award to the winners who were pampered and used politically, some knew how to win power taking advantage of the fame of their sporting merits.

Today the economy defines the destiny of the athlete, plays or competes here or there defined by pay, honor, love of the jersey and even nationality do not enter the field, their actors without realizing it every day become pieces of a board that has fewer rules and where everything is worth to win, but earn MONEY. Hence the many stories, the handling of FIFA, the deflated balls in the NFL, players who bet against them on online sites like Olybet, fixed games, doubts about the box and others, all for money. 

The sporting environment, its organizations and the government agencies themselves are bad. I have talked with athletes who already “in ortho” confess that they had to endure or do incredible things to get there and even there, to stay. Lending themselves to the fiscal game, double contracts, tricks that reach the place where they do the most damage, children, now when a little one “seems” good, their families see them as merchandise, and did not criticize the hope of triumph and why not, of becoming in a way of living from sport, but unworthy things are done in order to “place” the applicants on the path of a contract. 

They literally sell them, rent them, allow deals and lifestyles that are not for a minor, put them aside in unjustified stress and also neglect their studies limiting them from having other options for the future. But how many really manage to become professionals? The families bet everything as if it were a fact, and thus we find many former athletes in precarious conditions, saying that “they were reserves of this or that team”, wandering around without a job and with trauma for a psychiatrist.

We are dazzled by millionaire star contracts, but behind each one there are thousands underpaid and they do not charge well until they become indispensable and those are the least. Of course, the levels of all disciplines have improved, the price is expensive, the merchandise is surplus and competition forces, in truth, money is the name of the “game.”

Sport is a valuable commodity because it affects billions of people around the world. Although there are always negative sides, the sport will still be eternal, and it will always be as long as humans exist. Money may influence the sport but it will not completely control its sporty spirit.