Professional sports players (not just loyalty to the uniform or the stadium they play in) seem to be sacred cows in american culture, where questioning any of their perks is simply off limits.
People always call out Wall Street salaries, salaries above union folk, or any salary above minimum wage, but they praise, honor, adore, admire, respect, etc. sports players who make multi-millions up to hundreds of millions.
And who’s to blame for those salaries? It’s a free market system and we have a terrible economy. They get away with it because the Middle Class supports such gladiators.
The final straw for me was when sports fanatics swore up and down that they would “never again” pay for hundred dollar tickets to baseball games after the spoiled crybaby millionaire players went on strike in 1994, then they quickly caved on that and went back to worshiping the players during the home run streak between Sammy “corked bat” Sosa and Mark “steroid juicer” McGuire.
Pro athletes are entertainers and as such are paid as actors are paid. NFL, MLB, NBA, make a huge buttload of money every year.
Salaries of high-paid players are FREQUENTLY derided by fans and the sports media when the player fails to play well.
It did take MLB time to recover popularity after the strike, luckily for them though it was the height of the steroids home run era. Any fan who said “they’d never watch again” was like a person who says “OMG that RINO is a bastard, I’m never voting Republican again”. Things said at the height of anger are always reconsidered.