Oh, I understand all that, I was just pointing out the massive discrepancies in salary for the same person that exist in sports but few other professions. A top-of-the-class attorney may start out at $150k but it's not like they'll jump to $20m in a few years. My example of material cost was a bad one (was on my phone at the time). My general point is that sports don't have to be run exactly like a typical business because of the fluidity of sports. In typical business, there are few examples of a company saying "screw it, let's be really bad at our jobs for awhile!" or "I don't care what it costs, I want to beat the competition, even if we lose money doing it." No sports teams can run like that indefinitely but unlike many other businesses, they can take that attitude over the short- or even mid-term. If your industry allows you to occasionally be irrational with your allocation of funds, it makes sense to maximize that irrationality to achieve your goal more easily.