Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The pro athlete is a sad tale. He signs a big contract and thinks he's set for life. I didn't think I was set for life, and I don't now. As athletes, we are important, celebrities, in demand and rich. Then we are out of the game and we are not important, not celebrities, not in demand and not rich.
I have a hard time believing athletes are overpriced. If an owner is losing money, give it up. It's a business. I have trouble figuring out why owners would stay in if they're losing money.
And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.
If a player demonstrated that he is the best, and a team decides, even so, we don't want to pay him, as in any other business, he should be able to play elsewhere.
If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.
I think money in general hurts all sports.
Sports fans have been mistreated for a long time. They have overpaid for inferior food and they have had poor service.
Every athlete, I think, would like to play forever. They never want to acknowledge that they've lost a step or they can't quite do what they did before.
I worry when athletes are simply used by their universities to produce revenue, to make money for them, nothing to show at the back end. I grew up with a lot of players who had very, very tough lives after the ball started bouncing for them. And that's why I'm going to continue to fight.
It is not about money. It is about how you treat the player.