Professional athletes have it the best among all union workers, they receive close to half of the profits in the field, much better than the unions in Detroit. Still, that is not close to what they deserve for what they do. In all 4 major sports, injuries are a major concern and in Ice Hockey and Football in particular, life after retirement isn't that great. The pensions these players get are not enough to support someone that plays in the league for one year and then have their career ended not by lack of ability but by injury. The owners take way too much revenue and even though they are very generous compared to other companies. The one difference is that an NFL owner would not be able to find a non-union wide receiver as good as his current one but a General Motors manager could probably find someone to operate a piece of machinery about as well as someone who currently does it. The solution: players form their own leagues with their own management. Players should not need CBAs to be able to play a sport. They should have free range of where they play because they are the one with the skill, not the owner. All an owner provides is coaching, money, and facilities. Players could get the first two easily, they are extremely rich so they would have enough capital to start the league and if they included coaches into the mix I'm sure they would be happy to join. The facilities issue would have been impossible 80 years ago when teams were in charge of building playing grounds but now a-days that isn't the case. Teams have the cities build the stadiums and lease them from the city. If players were to pull out of their respective league and create their own league, If there willing to share a little bit of the revenue with the city, the city might give them the lease. This was attempted by baseball players early in the 20th century but failed but with players now being more important than the logo, it could work now. Players have the ability to make this happen, but will they ever try?
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