Who Deserves What?

I watched a lot of today’s Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Like anyone who saw this game, I was impressed by the 80-yard-plus winning drive led by Giant quarterback Eli Manning in its final minutes.

But as I watched the post-game presentation of the Lombardi Trophy to the Giants, I was more than a bit put-off.

Fox analyst and former NFL great Terry Bradshaw interviewed Manning and announced that the Giant QB had won the Super Bowl MVP award. Then, as he handed the keys to a new hybrid vehicle to Manning, Bradshaw told him take it for a ride because “you deserve it.”

Now, at one level, that was just something to say, polite and laudatory words. But I flinched when I heard them.

Eli Manning is a fine quarterback and he did a great job. But, as I recollect, he is paid handsomely for his work and he also picked up a little more change during this post-season. He did his job competently and well, even as people maligned him and second-guessed him this season.

But does he deserve a hybrid? Or any of the added baubles that he and other superior-performing athletes get?

I know. It’s all about the marketplace. The NFL attracts lots of fans who buy tickets and the league creates a product for which TV networks pay tons to broadcast. Supply and demand; the bigger the demand, the more the revenue. And the more hybrids. I get it.

And I don’t fault Manning for cashing his paychecks. If I were talented in a way that was broadly valued by our society and economy, I wouldn’t say, “Aw, you don’t have to pay me the millions you had in mind to write on that check.”

But that verb Bradshaw used, deserve, really bugged me.

This past week, I was the guest of a young man at a workshop site. Stefan is differently abled. Several weeks ago, as I was visiting his family and him, he asked if I would come to the county facility where he and about thirty other differently-abled people do contract work for Smead. They package tabs for notebooks. The work they do may not be as difficult as reading a defense, but it’s productive work done by people who many may be inclined to ignore or dismiss.

And the people at the facility where they work–from nurses to clerical workers, from drivers to cooks–what do they deserve for competently and compassionately creating an atmosphere in which others can thrive?

And how about the teachers who make sure our kids know how to read? Or the nurses who work long shifts in intensive care units?

I truly believe that the value of one’s work or the fulfillment it brings cannot be measured in dollars and cents. Many people who voluntarily take up demanding work do it despite low pay…or at least pay that’s substantially lower than what they could get in the NFL. They do it because they feel that’s what they want to do or were made to do or will be most fulfilled in doing.

But sometimes I wish that we as a society would pay them what they deserve.

[The picture above is from Yahoo News.]

[This has been cross-posted at my personal blog.]