Should athletes get paid millions a year?

Why do professional athletes make millions of dollars a year just for playing a game. I d agree that they have amazing talents and that they deserve to get paid for these talents but why so much? http://www.progressiveu.org...
I plan on hitting a few key points,

|DEBT|

America is in a 11 trillion dollar debt at the current moment, according to http://www.brillig.com.... When the salary cap for the upcoming NFL season is $102.5 million per team, and we currently have 32 teams, we are paying 3.28 billion to teams to spend half on players and equipment and the other half on their 50 million dollar houses and their 4 million dollar cars. Anyone could easily live a year with 150,000 dollars, so when we could spend 50 million dollars less on the NFL, then we could save 1 billion dollars a year. This could cut our rising daily debt down to 2 billion rising daily. we could quickly turn that around to profits if we did this with every team in every sport. http://www.hivaidssearch.com...

|Our Health|

When We lose billions to football players, and billions to AIDS research, What do you think is more important. We lose 3 million lives to aids each year, until we can find a cure or vaccine this number will steady grow. Today's new reports of a possible vaccine, but it has not been tested enough to be sure it will work. http://wiki.answers.com... If it doesn't, these people will continue to die. We spend around 8+ million dollars a year on AIDS research alone, this doesn't include any other STD. So again, Is Your own personal yacht worth 3 million suffering people? http://www.hivaidssearch.com...

I would like thank my opponent for this debate.

My arguments will focus on main points
I will be referring professional athletes as PA for reasons of brevity.
for easy in this short debate I think it would be best to limit this to the NFL.

1 why PA make the large sums money

2 The government forcing the NFL to cut there caps in half would actually hurt the US economy

To begin I will rebut my opponents points

so to summarize your first point {NFL players con survive with less money so they should} For this I would like my opponent and the audience to imagine themselves as a to draft pick, you are now negotiating a contract. do you try to get as much money as possible or just enough to get by?
now to your next point { If less money were spent on PA than the government would be able to pay down the debt} first of all "we" are not spending 3.28 billion to teams. private company's like the NFL do. because of his we would not save any money let alone a billion, that money would go to team owners.
You 3rd point about health is completely irrelevant because first we do no loose billions to football players. second point is a non sector because taking money away from PA would not give more to medical research.

now to my points

PA make large sums of money because that is what the owners of the individual team are willing to pay them. the reason they are willing to pay these large amounts is because they think they can make money by having them on there team, and they get this money from the fans that pay to see them play or buy there merchandise.

now to my second point

our economy is based on spending so if you take money away from these people they will be able to buy less and thus hurting the economy

Thank You for challenging. (p.s. First Debate Ever)

I would like to make a point before continuing.

when you said,
"I would like my opponent and the audience to imagine themselves as a to draft pick, you are now negotiating a contract. do you try to get as much money as possible or just enough to get by?"
When PA make 20 million a year, and yes anyone would like to make more for what they do, they do not need 20 million to live comfortably. Many people can live comfortably on 500 thousand a year, so why do we pay and extra 10 or 20 thousand to schools and teachers where almost every child in America will pass through and give them better life skills so they can continue to help improve our future and economy.

Economy

If our economy is based spending, then if we take money from there people and give it to other professions, or people who need it, the they are also likely to spend more. To be fair, if we have all PA spending in top of the line products then what happens to the little businesses, they support the economy as much, or more than any top of the line shop.
With more people with average jobs spending in local businesses, this too can boost our economy greatly.

Your first point also depends on the smaller people like myself. With out the people spending locally then there is no money flow, thus less spending on merchandise, and entertainment. With out that spending, where does the NFL get their money to spend on players. So based on my paragraph above, we need to pick up the flow of money in smaller economies by paying them more, we then can purchase merchandise. If they continue to "suck up" our monies, they it will lead to their downfall, so if "we" gave them less then we make more. And as i said anyone could live comfortably on 500 thousand to a million compared to 1million.

I would like to thank my opponent for this debate and for joining DDO, hopefully the will continue to be an active member.

for my final round I will rebut my opponent arguments and then give my conclusion.

==rebuttal==

I would agree con that PA do not need millions to live comfortably but in our economy everyone tries to get the most amount of money for the goods and services they provide. The reason they make the money they do is first because of inherent risk associated with there job. They could easily get hurt and never be able to work again. The second reason for these salaries is the same reasons why top CEO's make large sums of money. It is because these people can bring in even bigger profits.

==" so why do we (not) pay {an}and extra 10 or 20 thousand to schools and teachers..."

I believe what pro is trying to show here is that if "we" paid PA less than "we" could pay teachers more. What he seams to be forgetting is that we do not pay PA any money, private companies do. Also there is no inverse economic relationship for PA and teachers or others. What is meant by this is other peoples 's will not go up I PA make less, and do not make less because PA make more.

now to cons first economic argument

If we were to take money from PA and give it to people who need it would do little to improve the economy because if they need the money it is unlikely they will spend it on things they don't need like cars, electronics, toy, and other needles spending that causes growth in the economy . Furthermore if people are not buying these things than no one will be getting played to make them.

my opponent seams to have misunderstood my original arguments, because the point of it was to show that PA make this money because millions of people watch them every weak. Also if fewer people watched sports than they would make less money. My opponents final remarks he continues to make the mistake of thinking that because they have more we have less and this simply is not true. If the PA make less money the only people that would profit are the team owners and professional sports organisations (NFL).

for my conclusion I will revisit some of my previous arguments

first everyone in a capitalist system tries to make as much money as they can for the goods and services they provide.
The players try to get as much money as they can further athletic skills
The team owners try to profit the most they can, for this reason they are willing to pay the salaries that will yield them the most profit.

second There is no correlation between the salaries of PA and the salaries of the average person. The same way that my salary has nothing to do with how much money Bill Gates has.