Under your great capitalist system, football players do deserve more money than you librarian geeks. Pretty much anyone who can read can be a librarian. You need natural instincts, skill, talent, and size to be a great football player. Moreover, there is more demand for football players than there is librarians. Supply and demand baby! Go capitalism!
Likewise, Go Rams! (Dick Vermeil lives near me)
------------------ "Don't have a mind" - Kurt Cobain Breed, Nirvana
posted
Hmmm, go Rams or go Titans, hmmm, I am from St.Louis, But I live in Tennessee, hmmm, who do I want to win...wait a minute I remember now, I don't give a d*mn.
------------------ "Think of all the delightful aspects of the reproductive process: menstruation, pregnancy, labor. And the part we're trying to eliminate is sex?" Cecil Adams the guy who does Straight Dope.
------------------ Frank's Home Page John Linnell: "This song is called...it's called..." Audience: "Louisiana! Montana!" John Linnell: Don't tell me what it's called..."
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First: Yes, I agree w/ you completely. However, in St. Louis, we aren't used to having a successful sports team, so this is an exception. Sports fans around here tend to be a bit more excitable than most. For example, before the Rams played the Vikings, there was a bar downtown that had a "Viking funeral". They built a Viking canoe, painted it in the Minnesota team colors, stuffed it w/ hay and old Xmas trees, and put a dummy in it. Then they doused it in kerosene, lit it on fire, and shoved it out into the Mississippi River.
The city fire department and the Coast Guard gave them permission to do it. :-)
Anyway, regarding DT's arguement... Just because something requires special skill doesn't mean its worth millions of dollars. It takes skill to balance a refrigerator on one's head. Does that mean everyone who can balance a refrigerator on his/her/its head should be paid $10M a year?
------------------ Col. Maybourne: "Teal'c... It's good to see you well." Teal'c: "In my culture, I would be well within my rights to dismember you." -Stargate SG-1: "Touchstone"
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If there's enough demand for it, and it will sell products, then it will happen. The only reason poorly-educated college "graduates" can earn that much money is because some shmoe (well, really a whole bunch of them) will pay large bucks to go see them perform in person. There is an even larger group who will watch the same event on TV and see the sponsor's ads (and possibly buy the products).
There's large cash running around professional sports. Until recently, the players were content to be paid whatever the owners decided they should be paid. Then one of them (it doesn't matter who) decided that collective bargaining had nothing over "Pay me big money or I play for the other team." This couldn't happen before, because the owners conspired to blacklist players who would not cooperate. Eventually the drawing power of star players became a large enough factor that somebody caved. Owners began chasing after prospective stars with truckloads of money.
"Me! Me! I can pay millions! I know where the girls are! I know where the drugs (and the necessarily high-priced lawyers) are! We'll keep you out of jail and pay you fantastic amounts of money and protect you from all consequences!"
What young male with vague notions of how to make a living apart from his sports skills could resist? If I had had the talent, I don't think Id've spent 20 years in the Air Force with money, fame, and adoring women beckoning. Of course, I suppose my vocabulary would have suffered, but I'm sure I would never have noticed.
BTW, how much does a ticket to the game cost these days? I'll bet even the "cheap seats" ain't cheap!
------------------ "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." --Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Come Hither and Yawn...
YOU try figuring out the AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Version 2.) I defy any pro linebacker to put up with the crap I have to take from so-called human beings for a month without hitting anybody. Go ahead and multitask a community action group with an anti-freedom agenda, a two-month reading program planning and execution, collection development, three people who want books RIGHT NOW, and two kids who've never seen a keyboard in their lives mucking with your computers, ALL AT ONCE.
*doesn't bother mentioning what happens to the free use and exchange of information in most "socialist" countries*
I'd still rather be poor than shot.
(Yes, before you ask, I'm well aware that that was a cheap shot. Now, ask me if I'm sorry.)
I'm going to be quiet now, because this doesn't need to end up on the flameboard.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited January 26, 2000).]
The nice thing about athletes is they rarely make snide comments about the books you check out or give you a hard time because you take too long to pull out your library card or accuse you of cutting up a book that you brought back and pointed out to them was cut up.
Anyway, you still have yet to refute my (correct) statement that athletes are in more demand. Most people don't give a flying rat's tail (I would've dropped the F bomb there, but this isn't the flameboard) about libraries. Football, on the other hand... supply and demand baby!
Long live capitalism!
------------------ "Don't have a mind" - Kurt Cobain Breed, Nirvana
posted
Well, get your library card out before the librarian is standing there waiting for it, and you wouldn't have that problem. Interestingly enough, I just made a comment at work tonight about how annoying I find people who can't be bothered to bring their card w/ them, or who take fifteen minutes to find it in their wallet/purse/what-have-you.
The world is populated by idiots, but, for some reason, they seem to concentrate themselves around libraries. I don't understand it. A couple years ago, I would have thought a library would be an idiot-free zone. Boy, did I call that one wrong!
------------------ Col. Maybourne: "Teal'c... It's good to see you well." Teal'c: "In my culture, I would be well within my rights to dismember you." -Stargate SG-1: "Touchstone"
posted
Yeah, so football players are in demand. Whores are in demand too, but I don't see any signing $9 million dollar contracts.
Besides, football players are only in demand because the people have their priorities seriously out of whack (I know we agree on this, we just disagree as to what those priorities should be.)
I'm sorry you might have gotten a snide comment about a library book... Librarians aren't supposed to do that. But athletes don't ever make comments about someone carrying a stack of books? RE-ally? What school did you go to, Waldo Poindexter High?
As for the rest, what TSN says pretty much stands. I deal with more morons before 9 AM than most people do all day.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
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Unless, or course you go to my high school.
------------------ I bet when Neanderthal kids would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying "Don't forget the big heavy eyebrows." Then they would all get embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky eyebrows too, and then they would get mad and eat the snowman.
posted
Oh, and I forgot: How is the librarian supposed to know that you didn't cut that book yourself and are just trying to cover your own butt? People do that all the time, and they're very hard to catch.
I had a kid last year come in with a book he'd checked out and there were a couple pictures cut out of it. I took one look at it and told him he's have to pay for it. He got his dad and they got all high and mighty on me and asked how I dared to charge them for something they didn't do.
I said, "Look at the date due sticker, genius. I only bought this book last month and you're the first person to check it out at all."
The kid caved in and admitted it. The dad paid for the book, and probably skinned the kid when they got home. Too bad.
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
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