There are tens of thousands of professional athletes in America, of which perhaps a few thousand make enough money to be truly called wealthy.

For every Michael Jordan there are hundreds of players who made a great deal of money for a short period of time and have no real career skills to carry them through their 40's and beyond.

For every ex-pro athlete that's living a mediocre middle-class life there are several who are also suffering from debilitating injury, especially ex-football players.

Every shitty, relatively under-paid and short-career fourth-string nobody in the NFL is an athlete in absolute peak physical condition whose life revolves around training for his sport. He was was the best player on every team he was ever on until he made it to the pro leagues.

And for every one of him there are thousands of amateur athletes who never manage to make it pro, whether it be due to injury, lack of drive, poor genetics or just not being skilled enough.

There skill/pay ratio in most pro sports is shit. The level of dedication and effort combined with straight up having the right genetics required to reach those levels is obscene. Yes, Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez are hideously and frankly immorally over-paid by our society but the guys on that level are so few in number as to be insignificant.

Basically pro sports are a scam for everyone but the team owners and sponsors.