You see a few other places with similar fields though, like the absolute bleeding edge of traditional ballet, or some gymnastic events.
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_...
She said that being too tall made the balance beam harder as you had more chance to hit your head. I think been a while so anyone can correct me.
At London 2012's Olympics she set a world record in the Team Sprint, got silver in the Match Sprint and gold in Keirin.
The irony here is that Olympic Keirin is derived from a Japanese/Korean betting sport, which is basically horse racing. But with people.
NFL salary cap is $155M across 53 players = $3M/player
NBA salary cap is $95M across 14 players = $6.7M/player. But actually it is a soft cap so the teams can spend a lot more in extreme cases.
MLB has no salary cap.
I agree with much of your post, but it seems to me that NBA players make the highest salaries because the structure of the game and the level of competition put them in such high demand relative to supply.
NBA rosters are small, and only 5 players are on the court for each team at any time. There's also a huge drop-off in competitive performance[1] as you move down the bench from the elite players. Unlike the NFL, which has a substantial reserve of "replacement level" talent from college ball, there aren't that many folks who could play basketball at an NBA level and not be totally exposed. That's similar to baseball players, who are also among the most highly paid, even though there are more positions and rosters are bigger: There just aren't that many athletes out there who can bat above .200 against Major League-class pitching.
[1] http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2016_leaders...