future past today wrote:
What they are doing is making the so called pro athletes accountable to be a competitive pro athlete. I'm not sure why any poster here would debate the pro athlete being accountable to the services provided be accountable to what they signed up for. Athletes are paid to do that,its not a charity training fund which many seem to think here. If an athlete decides they cannot live with it then they do have the option not to sign and sign with a company that does not have the reduction language.Its not that complicated.
Nobody is saying that athletes are entitled to be paid if they don't perform. But that's a general principle that can be applied in different ways. For most pro athletes--indeed, for most professionals in any field--you sign a contract based on past performance. If you don't continue to perform at that level or better, then when the contract is up you either don't get a new one or you get an inferior one.
I also don't think anyone is suggesting that reductions are unfair in the sense that they weren't bargained for by parties who understood what they were agreeing to. What people are saying is that athletes really hate these clauses and they can really screw up incentives. For example, should you be encouraging an athlete who is struggling with an injury to keep racing all summer? Might it be better for them to end their season early, get healthy, and then make an Olympic team the next year? Of course, Nike may not care if athletes destroy themselves trying to avoid reductions, because they may figure that as long as Nike sponsors 90% of athletes then they'll have whoever makes the Olympics, and their reductions will keep them from paying very much for everyone else.