Overpaid Athletes
Paddy Lewis
MY six year old son has turned into a bit of a pious behavioural quality control freak. I personally blame the Catholic school system.
I often hear “Dad, treat people as you would want to be treated yourself” these days.
This is the same kid who, when playing Age of Empires on the computer, will kill a few of his own soldiers as a “performance management” lesson to make the others fight harder.
Anyway, treating yourself has taken on a whole new meaning in the sporting world in the last few days.
News that carded athletes in SPARC’s New Zealand Academy of Sport have been using their $400 a month ‘supplement’ allowance ($400! WTF?) to supplement their own personal grooming regime and that of their loved ones should not come as any surprise.
Sport, for some reason (and the infamous case of Keith Hancox and the Sports Foundation embezzlement aside) has always seemed to be leery of audit procedures, and athletes seem to enjoy benefits without any particular measures around how the benefits are earned.
I’ve been reading through a performance audit of a particular sport. There’s a range of athletes involved, from international-class down to the bloke who works fulltime, then trains with the team and gets a T-shirt and free match tickets.
The international-class chaps believed they deserved everything they got. This included a house, use of a car, salary (not the biggest in the world, but not the worst either) and some other smaller benefits. But they made the point that they worked hard for it. Analysis of their training regime showed they were doing up to an extra 10 hours a week of training outside of their team training, strength and conditioning work, and fitness work meted out by the coaches.They did work hard for it.
In the middle of the scale was another salaried group that bemoaned the fact they had to share cars, some didn’t get accommodation supplied, and were not listened to as much as the first group.
At the bottom were those who got no salary, no car, no accommodation.
The last group trained as cannon fodder for the starting team, but they also did extra training of their own – quite a lot.
The middle group did no extra training. Yet they were the ones who were seen in sponsored cars in resort towns (policy was no car to be taken outside the city), had complaints made about their behaviour, and generally moaned.
The point? In my experience, those at the very top of their sport use all the resources given to them to better themselves. Those at the bottom work with little resources to get to the top, if they can. The middle group either cannot or does not want to get better (they have realized their limitation and are happy to play professionally for as long as they can, for example).
The New Zealand Academy of Sport issue brings to a fore the fact we now have too many ‘middling’ athletes getting too many benefits. It’s time work was done on treating sporting association and individual athlete audits with more rigour to ensure that our elite sporting spend is going to those who are actually going to achieve – not just live off the taxpayer donut while they muddle along not making genuine progress.
Instead of treating others, they should be treated themselves to a long hard review of their performance as well as their tax-funded spending. The culture of handouts need a shake up.
Or they could just adopt my son’s performance management technique
I often hear “Dad, treat people as you would want to be treated yourself” these days.
This is the same kid who, when playing Age of Empires on the computer, will kill a few of his own soldiers as a “performance management” lesson to make the others fight harder.
Anyway, treating yourself has taken on a whole new meaning in the sporting world in the last few days.
News that carded athletes in SPARC’s New Zealand Academy of Sport have been using their $400 a month ‘supplement’ allowance ($400! WTF?) to supplement their own personal grooming regime and that of their loved ones should not come as any surprise.
Sport, for some reason (and the infamous case of Keith Hancox and the Sports Foundation embezzlement aside) has always seemed to be leery of audit procedures, and athletes seem to enjoy benefits without any particular measures around how the benefits are earned.
I’ve been reading through a performance audit of a particular sport. There’s a range of athletes involved, from international-class down to the bloke who works fulltime, then trains with the team and gets a T-shirt and free match tickets.
The international-class chaps believed they deserved everything they got. This included a house, use of a car, salary (not the biggest in the world, but not the worst either) and some other smaller benefits. But they made the point that they worked hard for it. Analysis of their training regime showed they were doing up to an extra 10 hours a week of training outside of their team training, strength and conditioning work, and fitness work meted out by the coaches.They did work hard for it.
In the middle of the scale was another salaried group that bemoaned the fact they had to share cars, some didn’t get accommodation supplied, and were not listened to as much as the first group.
At the bottom were those who got no salary, no car, no accommodation.
The last group trained as cannon fodder for the starting team, but they also did extra training of their own – quite a lot.
The middle group did no extra training. Yet they were the ones who were seen in sponsored cars in resort towns (policy was no car to be taken outside the city), had complaints made about their behaviour, and generally moaned.
The point? In my experience, those at the very top of their sport use all the resources given to them to better themselves. Those at the bottom work with little resources to get to the top, if they can. The middle group either cannot or does not want to get better (they have realized their limitation and are happy to play professionally for as long as they can, for example).
The New Zealand Academy of Sport issue brings to a fore the fact we now have too many ‘middling’ athletes getting too many benefits. It’s time work was done on treating sporting association and individual athlete audits with more rigour to ensure that our elite sporting spend is going to those who are actually going to achieve – not just live off the taxpayer donut while they muddle along not making genuine progress.
Instead of treating others, they should be treated themselves to a long hard review of their performance as well as their tax-funded spending. The culture of handouts need a shake up.
Or they could just adopt my son’s performance management technique
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