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Message: [QUOTE="Watchdog, post: 3378589, member: 10325"] Reading all the back and forth made me think about a couple factors that brought us to this point, the main one being there's money to be made (or scholarships offered by big name schools) as a result of being known and recognized as special? In the 60's, there wasn't much in the way of sports on TV, there was no cable or satellite and no social media and the players were thrilled to get a non-guaranteed contract for $10-15K per year (Mickey Mantle at $100K was about the tops in any sport). Syracuse even had an NBA franchise. No one saw Wilt's 100 point game and, if I recall correctly, Texas El Paso winning the NCAA championship wasn't televised. Things started heating up in the 70's and 80's and with more TV there came bigger contracts and endorsement money. Players began to realize if they drew attention to themselves they became bigger stars and with that came more fame and more money. Catfish Hunter was the first big free agent and made about $700K per year and people couldn't believe someone could get paid $20K per start. Andre Agassi's "image is everything" commercials for Canon in the 90's might have signalled the start of the hyper salary era. Along the way maybe some of the showtime stuff came from players wanting to simply show off what they could do compared to others. So today, the bottom line probably is the more you're known, the more you're worth to the team owners that want to sell tickets and shirts and to the advertisers or game manufacturers that put you in their commercials and products. And some might even do things because it gets them excited and amps up the crowd and their team. [/QUOTE]

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