Spend it like Beckham

Editor’s note: Hailing from Campobello, S.C., Russell Kooistra is a student at Polk County High School who fears Apple Corporation, Steve Jobs and hair metal.
He can be complained to or complimented via email at player9@gmail.com.

He earns millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for playing, endorsing, and having his own clothing line through Adidas, and as you all must know, David Beckham, star player of Real Madrid and the England national soccer team, is packing up his bags and arriving in Los Angeles to play for the L.A. Galaxy.

Well, chances are that you probably didn’t know that, but if you didn’t, you’ll begin to see it all over television in commercials — August 2007: Beckham arrives.

Real Madrid, a team out of Spain that usually wins the Spanish Liga for soccer or finishes second, seems like the perfect place to play, since you’re alongside great players.

The MLS, on the other hand, doesn’t have quite the reputation for being home to a bounty of great players.

So what prompted Beckham and his wife, ex-SpiceGirl Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham), to move to Los Angeles?

It wasn’t because of the infamously clean air that L.A. has to offer or the safety from natural disasters, especially earthquakes.

As in every professional sport nowadays, it was obviously about the money.

I mean he is being marketed everywhere in Los Angeles to attract crowds… and the Galaxy even redesigned their jerseys for him.

But this article isn’t just about soccer — it’s about nearly every professional sport, from football to baseball to kite landboarding. Yes, it’s a sport. Turn on ESPN for five minutes — you’ll hear the announcer mundanely declaring that the point guard for the Utah Jazz wants to be traded because he’s not being paid enough money or that the running back for the Kansas City Chiefs is willing to sit through training camp for a new contract — to these guys, $7 million dollars a year… isn’t enough.

My point is that professional athletes, from David Beckham to Terrell Owens, are clearly less and less concerned about the love for the game and more and more concerned about paychecks.
The solution — drop all sponsors from sports teams and have the money go to the jobs that are so much more important than the entertainment, like construction of new buildings and roads, teaching and education, and other jobs that are so important that people should want to do them more than look good on TV like actors.

With that said, go Panthers!