Pay Us What You Owe Us: All Sports Edition

So....Nothing?

Yesterday, WNBA Players wore Pay Us What You Owe Us shirts.

What do they THINK they deserve?

According to the USA Today's Nancy Armour: "The WNBA, like U.S. (Women's) Soccer, seems to think players should be grateful just to be playing. That the money the NBA and some of its owners pumped into the league entitles them to gouge the players in perpetuity. Funny how this is never an issue with men’s teams, even the ones that are perennial money losers."

Nancy Armour believes WNBA players should be paid "comparatively" to NBA players, like USWNT players are paid similarly to USMNT players.

You know what? I don't like Nancy Armour, not one bit. So instead of debating her about the WNBA specifically, let's talk about ALL American sports in general. My grandfather would have been good enough to play minor league baseball, if he chose, but he went to the war instead. He said "no athlete should make a million dollars to play ball." So I am judging contracts by 2025 standards. (Dollar amounts may or may not be accurate, I ran them through Google's AI Overview. But I think most were fairly close).

• Average NBA Player's Salary: $12,000,000 per year. Wow. OVERPAID. The NBA is one of my least favorite sports. Bunch of whiny prima donnas over there. About half the money the league makes goes to player salaries. Why do NBA'ers make so much more compared to their professional brethren? Because NBA rosters are so much smaller, again, comparatively.

• Average MLB Player's Salary: $5,000,000 per year. ABOUT RIGHT. For what a professional baseball player has to do, the salaries seem about right. My issue is that there's no salary cap, so, for the most part, the good teams all have the highest paid players. It's almost like poor teams are farm teams for the rich teams. About half the money the league makes goes to player salaries. Players are in the entertainment business and Major League Baseball is the top of the food chain for baseball. Minor League salaries start at $26,000 per year for Single A players.

• Average NHL Player's Salary: $3,500,000 per year. ABOUT RIGHT. Same argument as MLB, about right because about half the money the league makes goes to player salaries.

• Average NFL Player's Salary: $3,000,000 per year. UNDERPAID. One NFL player described every game as the equivalent of "getting into a car accident, then multiply that across every week for a season." The life expectancy of NFL players has now fallen into the 50s. If the average NFL career is only 3 years, would you trade $10,000,000 for 30 years off the end of your life? That doesn't sound like a great deal. Hall of Fame Broadcaster Greg Brinda said owning an NFL franchise was like having a license to print money. It may have been the wisest thing he every said.

• Average MLS Player's Salary: $350,000 per year. UNDERPAID. If you want to make millions playing soccer, you have to go to Europe. You say Messi plays in America? That contract he has with Inter Miami isn't like any other soccer contract in America.

• Average Major League Rugby (MLR) Player's Salary: $50,000 per year. UNDERPAID. You want to make hundreds of thousands a year? You've got to head to Europe or Australia.

• Average Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) Player's Salary: $30,000 per year. UNDERPAID. I am not aware of any of the best lacrosse players in the world making over $100,000 a year.

• Average Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) Player's Salary: $15,000 per year (plus housing allotment). UNDERPAID. Many MASL players have games on the weekends and work on the weekdays.

• Average Ultimate Frisbee Player's Salary: $500 per season. ABOUT RIGHT. C'mon, we're talking about team frisbee. Many players are paid $25 on a per game basis.

Now I specifically stuck to team sports, but in individual sports, like golf, tennis, or pickleball, you can also make millions, but most players don't.

Editor's Note: Yes, I said pickleball. According to the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) and Major League Pickleball (MLP), the best players can earn around $260,000 annually.

WNBA players', and Nancy Armour's, argument is that since they are playing basketball, they deserve similar money as NBA players. My argument is that the WNBA players are playing a TYPE of basketball. They should be making about the same as G League players. Actually-

The average G League player makes around $40,000. The average WNBA player makes about $140,000. If the best team in the WNBA, the Minnesota Lynx, and the worst team in the G League, the Iowa Wolves, played each other, you know who would win? The Wolves.

Now I'm just some jerk blogger on the internet? I'll listen to that argument. But the Wolves and Lynx are both coincidentally owned by the same ownership group. If they WANTED the Lynx to play the Wolves in an exhibition game, they could make that happen.

What if the best player on the Iowa Wolves ASKED for WNBA money? Again, the WNBA is not the top of the basketball food chain. The WNBA is not equal to the NBA. I could argue that Rugby, Lacrosse, and hell, Indoor Soccer, are all harder on an athlete's body than basketball.

I think it's funny that the WNBA compares itself to the most overpaid athletes in the world.

If you took a basketball and rolled it out to the middle of a basketball court, the average WNBA team would be about as good, or as a bad, as a Division III Men's College team. I'm thinking about a team like the 7-18 Hartford Hawks.

If the G League's Wolves played the WNBA's Lynx, the Wolves would beat the Lynx by 40-50 points. So by using a PURE BASKETBALL comparison, WNBA players are OVERPAID.

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