Columnist Dean Juipe: No stopping pro sports salaries

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, July 25, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

After being repetitively shocked, a person builds up a certain immunity.

As such, years of watching the salaries of professional athletes continue to escalate has led to an acceptance of their outrageousness.

When free agent baseball star Alex Rodriguez received a 10-year, $252 million contract last winter from the Texas Rangers, it was merely another in a lengthy series of astonishing deals that boggle the average fan's mind.

Like many a fortunate athlete before him, Rodriguez capitalized on a windfall that requires a Brink's trunk.

But after a shrug -- and a reminder of just how many zeroes are involved -- even the most envious of fans comes to the realization that life goes on, and that even bigger deals will be signed in the future.

Nevertheless, a look at how salaries have skyrocketed in the four major sports in just the last 10 years underscores the obvious: Being a pro athlete is great work if you can get it.

Oddly enough given the league's current claim that many of its member franchises are going broke, on a percentage basis National Hockey League players have seen the greatest rise in annual salaries in the past decade.

In 1990-91, the average NHL player was paid $271,000.

Ten years later that average salary was up to $1.4 million. That's a 517 percent raise.

No wonder only two NHL teams even bid on the league's top scorer, Jaromir Jagr, when he became available two weeks ago. (He went from Pittsburgh to Washington, with only the New York Rangers competing for his services.)

National Basketball Association players have fared nearly as well as their NHL counterparts and have seen their salaries go from an average of $823,000 in 1990-91 to $3.53 million this past season.

That's a 429 percent increase.

Major League Baseball players -- beyond and including Rodriguez -- have done nearly as well, seeing their average salary move from $597,537 10 years ago to $2.26 million today.

That's a 379 percent increase.

And National Football League players have experienced steady raises that have driven their average salaries from $430,000 in 1990 to $1.2 million in the most recent season.

That's a 279 percent increase.

You see the pattern here. And you know it isn't about to change.

Pro sports became a big business in the 1970s and, in the intervening years, no other non-technical industry in the world has thrown more money at its employees.

An accomplished athlete in today's marketplace will be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.

It didn't used to be that way, of course. Before the advent of six-figure contracts the typical athlete held a second job in the offseason that usually involved labor, car sales or a menial task that would supplement his sports income.

Now six figures have given way to seven, and, in many cases, eight. And unless an athlete is offered a second job as a broadcaster or TV analyst, he just isn't interested in adding to his workload.

Some fans accept such realities only grudgingly, yet most of us understand there's a supply and demand equation at work. Like it or not, today's athlete -- like all of us for that matter -- is being paid precisely what he's worth.