In recent years, the best "get-rich-quick scheme" has been to become a professional athlete. The road there, however, is not easy, considering the chances a single athlete has of making it to the `big leagues' and what they would give up for that slim chance. There are the hours of training, the personal days given up for competitions, and of course the personal expense of devoting time to a pursuit that may not pay off for years - if at all. Then again, if it does, you could be rolling in millions for playing a game in the prime of your life. In 1930, Babe Ruth signed a contract for $80,000, worth about $1,031,391 today. It would be strange to see any all-star member of the MLB making less than $10 million a year nowadays. In that same year, Ruth was asked what he thought of his yearly salary being more than President Herbert Hoover's $75,000, ($966,929 in today's currency). His response: "I had a better year than Hoover." The money doesn't stop there. George W. Bush made $400,000 last year, plus expenses. Alex Rodriguez made $28 million last season with the Yankees. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown makes £187,000 while John Terry, Captain of Chelsea F.C., makes £6,000,000. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper earns $280,000 Canadian a year, while Dany Heatley of the Ottawa Senators pockets $10 million. The multi-million dollar industry is based entirely on the entertainment of its audience. Tiger Woods brings in $22,902,706 in winnings and $105 million in endorsements, leading the pack by far. David Beckham will make an estimated $48,200,000, but it could be more, depending on ticket receipts and undisclosed bonuses. Players are not the only ones making money from the sports industry. The franchise owners and investors make a tidy sum. An NFL franchise might sell for about $800 to $900 million, meaning owners who purchased these franchises for only $500 to $600 million in the early 1990s, could sell, making a profit of almost half a billion dollars. Other smaller investments have the ability to pay back double the investment, although this cannot always be guaranteed. IT'S A FREE MARKET These exorbitant profits for the teams and players come from a variety of sources. As long as audiences still pack the stadiums, they will continue to be charged high prices. According to Justin Hartfield, a member of The Prometheus Institute, a public policy think tank in the US, the industry may be making less money, but it is still making money. Is it fair? "That's not a question for me to judge but for the market to judge, and right now the market is judging them to be fair prices because the owners are still making money on their sport teams," he says. Much of the income for teams comes from television contracts, licensing, merchandising, and advertising. Ticket prices are usually determined by what owners think the market will bear. Hartfield doesn't think players are to `blame' for their salaries but that it is a combination of the audience's willingness to support them, and the agents' desire for a fatter 15 percent. "Agents are the ones who demand the salaries. The players themselves, for the most part, aren't very savvy, in terms of `what is the going rate on the market for someone with my [skills]'". He isn't the only one that thinks that. Steve Rushin, a long time sports writer for Sports Illustrated magazine, does not necessarily see it as such a bad thing. "Most people look back at the good old days of baseball, but you've got to remember that, during those days, a team could have you sign a reserve clause that bound you to the team," he says. Additionally, "racism was rampant." While those may be remembered as the golden days of sport, many of the players now would not be playing if attitudes had not changed. As Rushin says, the golden days "were actually pretty terrible." Rushin thinks that the lawyers and agents that players have hired are a necessary evil, and that the short professional life of athletes is often the reason they try to get as much as they can, while they can. "A year's salary can often set you up for life, but the problem is that often when they make more money, they spend more than they have. They need to get agents that will help them manage their wealth, because often you have players who are perfectly happy playing where they are playing, leaving for just a few dollars more." What has changed? "We can't relate to the professional athlete on a human level. Things like talk radio, and fantasy leagues - these all dehumanise the athlete, and make us not think of him as a human being." The money earned by professional athletes has also isolated them from society. "The New York Yankees and New York clothing stores had a deal, and the Yankees' top players would stand and greet customers. I don't think they actually helped anyone, but the point is that they did it, but now it's not worth their time, their wealth is so over the top." Rushin believes that the day athletes became "zillionaires was the day the access to everyone shut down. "What Manny Ramirez makes is no more vulgar than bailed out banks trying to buy private jets," says Rushin. However, he does recognise that ticket prices are getting higher and higher, as are food and drinks at the venues. This makes the sport industry even less accessible and affordable. THE TRUE SPIRIT OF SPORTS Olympic athlete and rowing gold medal winner Silken Laumann has a particular interest in amateur sport, and some strong opinions on the professional world. One of Canada's best known athletes, she has had quite a successful career as a motivational speaker and is regarded as a great advocate for sport in Canada. She sees endorsements as providing athletes with the ability to excel at their sport of choice. "Endorsements for the vast, vast, majority of Olympic athletes do not benefit from sponsors, and I speak to a lot of school kids, because, not only am I a motivational speaker, but I go into schools and it's one of the first questions that the kids ask me: `Do you get rich?'. You have to explain to them that one of every 100 athletes that go to the Olympics may actually get an endorsement deal, because of their athleticism." Laumann also believes that since sports are such a source of `joy', access should be levelled across the board. "The cost of the salaries has driven up ticket prices. I think sport should be accessible to everybody. I like the idea that you could take your kid to a hockey game and not have to save for six months to do it. That would not be ideal. I don't know if the large salaries that are enjoyed by a lot of professional athletes has changed the game in a positive way." She also thinks sport has its value in just being played for the love of the game, and athletes at their best do it for that love. "They are driven by a desire to run faster, jump higher or row better. The drive is an intrinsic motivator; I think that is true for the best professional athletes. It is the sheer joy of the game. Just take a look at [The Phoenix Suns'] Steve Nash. He's a Canadian and you look at him, and you know he is having a lot of fun out there. A lot of fun being very good." Still, there is a limited time for athletes to make their fortune, and the millions of dollars they are seeing right now, could dry up. "I think that many of our athletes are massively unprepared for what it will be like, to be in the spotlight. I don't think we do enough to support them. Our sports' agents should be doing better jobs at managing their money, and managing their image."