#olympic pride

You are NOT alone… ;’)

I’ve been going back and forth with the idea of paying Olympic athletes to compete and I’m coming full circle to thinking they shouldn’t be paid.

I realize the Olympics is a business that rakes in billions in revenue. Why shouldn’t they pay the athletes? The easy answer would be endorsements but that doesn’t cover the trainers and training time in takes to mold these people to become Olympians and not all athletes receive endorsements.

Mark Cuban, the mercurial owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, believes owners are being uncompensated for their athletes to participate. Cuban calls the free participation of NBA athletes stupid:

If you look up stupid in the dictionary, you see a picture of the USA Dream Team playing for free for corporate America so the U.S. Olympic Committee can make millions of dollars. If you come up with something that you own, that you give it to me for free so I can make billions of dollars, I want it.

And it has nothing to do with patriotism. It’s all about money. You don’t see the Olympic Committee saying, ‘Oh we made so much money. Let’s give it to people.

His argument sounds altruistic with the idea of spreading the wealth amongst athletes and the entrepreneur (or rather the American) in me agrees, that offering these players enormous contracts only to risk it for another business’s tournament is ridiculous.

However, the Olympics was founded on the principle of global participation and with that comes the ideologies and values for each country.

The value that China holds for their Olympians is much different than Brazil. Some countries go to great lengths to ensure the well being of their athletes.

Hypothetically, how could you pay these athletes and determine a fair amount? A $100,000 would be an enormous amount for an athlete from Angola but hardly comparable to Kobe Bryant’s or Lebron James’s normal professional salary? Essentially, no matter the amount you would have to play for pride. Any amount of money offered to American athletes would be purely symbolic. Didn’t we use our amateur athletes before in USA Basketball? That didn’t sit well with us losing in 1988. Don’t we want the best we have to offer represent our country?

Cuban would make the argument that it’s a small carrot to dangle for the huge amount a profit the Olympics makes. There is no argument that the Olympics is a business and an international power house but isn’t that the point of business? To be successful? They marketed in a way to use a countries desire for pride and profit tremendously from it. Sounds like good business to me, maybe not for the NBA owners per se. What would Cuban do? Forbid players from playing in the Olympics? Strip them of the glory of gold or convince them it isn’t as precious as they think it is? I think Cuban grossly undervalues the pride that comes from representing one’s country.

The desire isn’t entirely chauvinistic either there are a lot of factors to consider. It’s seeing how these ideologies and cultures compete against one another. The United States values a free market where athletes are cultivated without government endorsements (albeit in some cases a heavy amount of brand endorsements), other countries, such as China, have athletes that are government funded.