Athletes, Entertainers, The Two Commas – Do They Really Care?

Whenever an athlete is praised for their success they always want to thank the fans. They want to thank us but do they care enough to help us? They love being in a free country but do they love it enough to help it? The country that is allowing them to play these sports and make millions of dollars doing it. Maybe some of them don’t care. Maybe some of them do but they don’t know how. This is just one suggestion.

From my research I was able to get the salaries of players in the NBA, the NLF, and the MLB. Now I am not saying that this is a hundred percent accurate but I do believe that it is close. I used several different sources thanks to the World Wide Web.

What I was looking for was athletes making more than ten million dollars for the 2012 season. In the NBA I found 61 players, in the NFL there was 35 and in the MLB there was 89, put them all together and that’s 185 athletes. 185 athletes making more than ten million dollars for the 2012 season, that’s $1,850,000,000. Believe it or not some of these players are actually making over twenty million dollars.

When I was a kid I idolized professional athletes but the older I got the more I realized that they’re not the people that I thought they were We live in a world filled with people that only care about themselves. Volunteering three times a year is not giving back to your community, especially when there are cameras following you while your doing it. All that does is show that you are trying to portray yourself as something your not.

If all of these athletes donated $25,000 to food pantries in their communities, that would be a total of $4,625,000 worth of food, just imagine how many families we could feed. Forget about the autographs, forget about the meet and greets. You are blessed to be in this position so why not give back to the people that are making this possible. Without fans there is no revenue. Without revenue you don’t have ten million dollar contracts to play ball. If each family that qualified for help got $200 a month for food for one year. That’s 1,927 families that could be helped.

Lets give back to the people that are scraping all of their money together just so that they can come and watch you play. Just so that they can buy there kid the jersey that they’re dying to have. There are children everywhere idolizing these athletes because of what they do. Lets have these same kids also idolize you because of who you are as a person.

To be fair though this article cannot only be addressed to athletes. There are musicians, actors, producers, businessmen, and a load of others that make just as much money as these athletes if not more. This is about our country coming together for the greater good. If all of these people making millions came together we could change our country for the better. What happened to love your neighbor as yourself? What happened to giving a helping hand? You’re making millions and you can’t give a few thousand to feed the hungry, to build housing for the homeless. To show the people in need that somebody cares. That we aren’t giving up on you, that we’re here for you and we’re prepared to prove it. Words can only do so much. Change can only come from action.

There are many men and women in this country with a two-comma income. I couldn’t find any statistics about 2011 or 2012 but in 2010 there was over three million millionaires living in our nation. So lets do the math so that we can properly paint this portrait. Take the athletes, entertainers, and all of the rest of the 2 comma people and lets see how much good they can do for our country. I can’t help but to think of a quote from a great man that has sadly left the mind of many Americans.  I believe it was John F Kennedy that said, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

If all of these 3 million millionaires donated $10,000 to local food pantries there would be 30 billion dollars worth of food for them; if we keep the same formula from before and give $200 a month for each family in need for an entire year. That’s enough money to feed 12.5 million families. Just think of the impact this would have on our country. More children would be doing better at school because they’re not going there hungry. The crime rate would decrease because more people wouldn’t have to worry about feeding their families. Obviously there will still be people struggling but at least it’s a start. Anything is better than doing nothing.

The government is not off the hook. They’re still very deserving of most of the blame. Every time there’s a natural disaster we are always there to help. It doesn’t matter where it occurs we are there to assist them. We do so much for others that we often forget about helping ourselves. We feed the hungry in other countries before we feed our own citizens in need. Our government tries so hard to be everyone’s big brother that we forget about our sons and daughters at home. I don’t want to sound selfish but at the same time. Our country is in a recession so therefore we have every right to be selfish because we are doing it for the greater good. We are doing it to help our neighbors, our co-workers, and our families. We cannot continue to pretend like we’re ok because we’re not. Every day it seems like we’re slipping further and further away from what is right. We have allowed ourselves to put up blinders so that we don’t have to see the truth behind what is happening all around us.

So to all of the rich and famous that want to thank us for their success, stop thanking and start helping.