Langley: Freedom over basketball

Julie Langley Ranger Reporter

We live in a world where money talks, where anything goes if the price is right, in a world that if you can throw a football or hit a home run, you are practically an idol.

Julie Langley Ranger Reporter
Julie Langley
Ranger Reporter

Our children are taught from a young age that sports are an important factor in our life, and some parents push their children into sports for the good money.

Few parents will push their children into the Army or the Navy, though.

We see the need to pay ungodly amounts of money to the athletes who entertain us each season.

I am sure the games are hard and the pressure to perform the way the public expects them to is rough, but is it harder than giving your life to protect your country?

Our men and women stay overseas for years at a time and leave their families behind to fight for our rights, yet they barely can support themselves and their families.

The lowest pay I can find on ESPN.com for a 2014 NBA player is $507,336 for one season. Even if that amount were a three- or four-year contract that the player has signed with the team, even after taxes, that is a lot more than the average person would bring home.

The annual salary for a private in the Army with six years’ experience is $20,602.80, per the Army website.

That amount will barely feed and clothe one person for that year.

Yet we still say he or she signed up to be there and put his or her life in the line.

On the Navy website, the highest pay for an officer with four years’ experience is listed as $86,052.

Granted, you or I might be able to live on that pay comfortably, but we are not putting our lives on the line for our country or fighting for millions of people’s freedoms.

The highest paid NBA player makes $23,500,000, according to ESPN.com.

That contract is for just one season. “Wow” is all I can say.

How have we come to a point in this life that the game is so much more important than the people who fight each day and risk their lives so that you and I have everyday freedom?

How do we feel that a quarterback should be paid millions and soldiers paid pennies?

Some of the players donate to charities, which is great, but I feel the salaries should be reversed.

After all, would you rather have freedom or basketball?

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