Athletes in professional sports are the best that their sport has to offer. Many spend the majority of their lives preparing to reach this level. Through childhood, many will spend their summers playing in the various Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) games. participants in different sports can start playing in the AAU as young as 8 years old. More can be learned about the AAU here.

The track to becoming a professional athlete demands more than time and effort than most can offer. Athletes who are attempting to reach the professional level not only to develop their skills but showcase them consistently to gain attention. To separate yourself from the pack and have a spotlight on you means that you must give the majority of your time to becoming better.

A caveat of this is that there is an immense amount of strain placed on an athletes body throughout their life. Health is a factor that goes unnoticed by fans but plagues the minds of athletes. At the professional level, an athletes career can take a drastic turn for the worse or end because of an injury. Even more so, an amateur athlete had the potential to reach the pros, could never reach that height because of a career-ending injury. Because of the fear of career-ending injury, athletes make sure to be in the best shape possible. While many injuries that would end a professional athletes career, wouldn't necessarily be the be all end all of most, it is essentially most of an athlete's earning potential going down the drain.

Injuries can be career ending but they affect athletes in sports differently. The difference in revenue generated by professional leagues is one factor to look into when considering an athletes earnings. However, digging deeper if we look at the types of contracts given to players of different leagues we'll see a major discrepancy. The National Football League (NFL) is the highest earning professional sports league in the United States. The National Basketball Association (NBA) lags behind the NFL placing 4th on that list. Taking these two sports leagues we will learn how different the result of an injury can be for athletes in different sports. The average salary earned by athletes in the NBA is $5 million while for the NFL it is 2 million.

It is clear that there is foul play at work where the highest earning professional sports league (the NFL) is not also the highest paying. Football a contact sport at its core is prone to having players injured. Injuries in a sport like football will likely hurt their earning potential. The NFL typically does not offer what is called a guaranteed contract. Te contracts ensure that players receive all the money that is listed to earn for their time on that team. Like all contracts for professional athletes, the money can be divided up differently based on each year. The main issue with contacts that are not guaranteed is that only some of the money that is promised will actually reach the player without question. the NFL is notorious for allowing teams to not offer guaranteed contracts to their players.

Not having a guaranteed contract is very dangerous for athletes who make their money off of their ability to physically play the game. An injury can end a players career but also hurt their chances of earning money that they would have otherwise. The NBA differs because it is common place practice to offer guaranteed contracts.This means that in the tragic event that a player has a career or season ending injury they will still receive the money that was offered to them. For athletes in professional football, like any other athlete has spent most of their time training, honing their skills, and keeping healthy to reach the professional level. With injuries like concussions taking place and going underreported players are at great danger playing the game. It is sinister for the highest earning sports league to allow their respective franchises treat their players in such a way.