[gonores]

Your argument is a flat-out bad argument.

What's the difference between basketball/football and other sports?

Two words.

Owner Risk.

Even better....one word.

Speculation

Only in football and basketball is there a massive element of speculation risk.

Alex Smith #1/#1 in football: 6 years, $57 mil
Andrew Bogut #1/#1 in basketball: 5 years, $26 mil (and that money is guaranteed)
Justin Upton #1/#1 in baseball: ~$5mil

Football teams that are drafting #1 overall usually clock in around $500-600 million in franchise value. Do you know what happens to a $500 million franchise after a few $50 million investments go wrong?

It's even scarier for the NBA, with poor teams clocking in around the $150 million mark. The Bucks had to outlay a sixth of their value on Bogut this year.... in guaranteed money.

Compare that to the $5 million laid out by Arizona (worth $286 mil) to Upton or the $3 million max contract for rookies in the NHL ($110-$170 million franchise value for poorer-performing teams), and you start to get a glimpse of the economics involved with major pro sports. Baseball and hockey have a well-developed farm system to improve young talent. Even though baseball players can go "pro" at age 17, when was the last time you saw an 17 or 18 year-old on a major league diamond?

As far as other sports, I shouldn't have to really expound on my argument too deeply. If Michelle Wie fall apart on tour, she doesn't get paid. She's not taking away cap space from better-performing teammates. She's not a risk to anyone but herself. Ditto for Suzie Q. TennisPlayer or John H. BilliardsPlayer.

And is it really that bad of a gig for a 18 year-old aspiring football or basketball player? Telling them to go spend two years getting an education and being big man on campus while the owners accumulate a little more film and info on the player before investing a huge chunk of equity on these players? Are owners really "keeping blackie down" by telling them to wait a year or two before making 8-digits?

In a perfect world, a professional draft would work like this: #1 overall pans out as the best player available in that year's draft. #2 pans as second best player in the draft, and so on. It's not that owners want to keep blackie down. It's that they want to pay players what they are worth. Off the top of my head, a good example might be the 2001 NBA draft. 19yo high-schooler Kwame Brown goes #1 and busts. 19yo Tony Parker goes #28 overall and earns jack squat. Another year or two of development for these players, and suddenly Parker isn't earning less than $1mil a year while Kwame makes more than $4mil a year.

Are we to fault players for trying to cash in while they can...before everyone discovers they go bust or before they suffer a career-ending injury? Of course not. But just like in all business, money is power. The owners get to call the shots, and owners are all about mitigating risk.

(Ready for my cheesy closing line?)

You're screaming black and white, but all owners care about is green. Owners might have a problem with paying first-overall money to a poor black kid named Kwame Brown, but they'd have no problem paying the same kind of money to a poor black kid named Lebron James. There's too much at risk in the world of pro sports to be a racist owner.