f Professional Team SportsHenry G Demmert). Indeed, most all behavioral situation involves play. For example, in business metaphors involving play are used extensively. Workers compete for higher paying position; groups of individuals form teams (firms) and compete against other teams for consumers' dollars. In politics individuals and semi-cooperative groups (parties) struggle against each other for votes and at the same times trade votes: they engage in "political games" (SportometricsTexas A&M University Press). Even within the household setting, spouse, sibling, and parent-children relationships structured around the incentive constraint domain of play (SportometricsTexas A&M University Press).Certainly, sporting events qualify as play. In fact, custom so closely associates these things that the previous sentence might read: play qualifies as play. If anyone did research on business or anything related with economics might find it frivolous, but the importance of play as fundamental economic behavior changes this perspective. The fact that athletic events present very pure forms of play strengthens the case for economic research into sports rather than rendering such work less interesting. Sports become an arena of pure economic activity. Incentives and constraints are spelled out clearly; players act as rational economic agents; sporting events and seasons can be seen as the operation of miniature economies (SportometricsTexas A&M University Press).The PGA has a unique pay structure when it comes to athletes. Most professional teams pay their athletes win or lose, but the PGA chose the economics structure to only pays those athletes who comes out on top at every individual tournament. Many critics in the past said that this kind of structure was going to fold. The athletes would create some kind of union and overrule the pay system. Today nearly thirty years after sport economist Randy Albelda raised the comment that the PGA was g...
