One cannot truly blame the workers for wanting more money. After all, almost all of us get paid to do a job and there is someone or someones who own the company we work for. But there is a difference between saying we want to work elsewhere due to better conditions and simply wanting a bigger paycheck.
The difference comes down to integrity. It is OK to want to be paid more money, but one should not use the excuse of wanting some different opportunity elsewhere if what they really want is more money. A person should just say they want more money. It's fine.
ABBA created one of their best-known songs about the situation. "Money, Money, Money" came out in 1976, and the tune is about someone scraping by, wanting to find a rich partner so that they live like the wealthy, but really how money rules the world when it shouldn't. The goal should not be money but happiness, aside from a person's monetary value.
ABBA has the perfect song for the NFL offseason
In the NFL this offseason, there have been a number of examples where players should have listened to the ABBA song before they issued statements about wanting to leave their teams for several reasons. These players were still under contract and making a good amount of coin, but they wanted more. Only they did not express it that way.
Cleveland Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett wanted to be traded and go to a team that had a better chance of winning a Super Bowl. Garrett stayed with Cleveland, however, after the team offered him $40 million a season. That made him happy, and what did he truly care he said he just wanted to win?
Former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf said he wanted to go to a team with a better quarterback situation, to play in a warmer climate, and to a team that might win a Super Bowl soon. What he really wanted was more money. He might have come across better had he just said that instead of saying he wanted those other things.
Seattle traded Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers, who most certainly did not have a better quarterback situation, was not any warmer than Seattle, and was no closer to winning a championship. But Metcalf soon worked out a five-year and $150 million extension with Pittsburgh, and he was happier.
Professional athletes play a game in order to hopefully make a lot of money. They should not be ashamed to own that. They just don't need to create falsehoods that they are looking for anything else other than, as ABBA sang, money, money, money.