Perhaps.

But in the very real world of aspiring drivers there is an abundance of talent out here competing for jobs, and the results often don’t account for the talent of the drivers involved. So many never really get a shot at the bigger series’ and there’s simply no wiggle room for those who ARE there. They simply can’t pull the nonsense r/t contracts that the stars in other sports do. You can run down a very extensive list of drivers who certainly are/were talented enough, not only to drive Indy cars but to compete for wins against the leading shoes of today’s championship, that were either forced to move on to another series or are unemployed today. Oriol Servia, unemployed. Jon Fogarty, forced to another series, as was Buddy Rice, Memo Gidley, Alex Gurney, Jonathan Bomarito…so Kanaan, Dixon, HCN, et al, know, this deal is a gift, so-to-speak. Ya, they worked hard to get ‘here’, as did the stick and ball guys to get ‘there’. But there are fewer deals over here…how many guys on an NFL roster x how many teams in the league? Now, how many full time Indy Car drivers in the series?

Then there’s the fact that no NFL/NBA team is going to look twice at someone with no actual ability who shows up with a dumptruck full of money and says “I want to be on your team”. When a driver without talent can purchase their way into a major-league series (not just a recent phenomena), unlike the NFL or NBA – other drivers know that they’d best keep their wits about them when it comes to bitchin’ about the salary…in order to keep their job.

Players not respecting contracts just happen to get more popular press, and are more easily characterized as greedy and selfish.

For most drivers at any level of racing, and especially in Indy Cars, sponsors can be fickle, it takes a lot of hard work to obtain them, and even when the driver is a big part of landing a sponsor, they are often wedded to the team. Most drivers know not to rock the boat where sponsors are concerned, and sponsors probably take a pretty dim view of public contract disputes.

This may be more true in NASCAR or in the Indy Cars of the past than today’s Indy Car, but the driver’s share of race prize money is often a bigger part of their compensation than their salary. Drivers will move from team to team when they believe it will give them a better chance of winning not just because they like winning, but also because they like the money that is paid out to drivers who win. A winning driver with a $1 salary CAN make a lot more than a backmarker being paid six figures.

And aside from this, there really isn’t much precedent for such public contract disputes in racing. Someone has to get the ball rolling, even team owners can set an example (which they don’t because sponsors and manufacturers almost always hold more cards then they do).
While Chris Johnson, has dozens of cases as player precedent to justify his demands, he’s really not acting all that different from his team’s owner. Bud Adams played the same games with the cities of Houston and Nashville.

Regarding the danger argument, until thinking about it at a race a couple months ago, I always considered racing to be a terribly dangerous sport. However, which sport produces more serious injuries every year – racing or football? Football for sure. Mike Conway had an awful wreck at Indy and had a badly broken leg and a broken back. Severe leg, neck, back, and head injuries are so commonplace in football that they hardly get mentioned. That’s why someone like Chris Johnson is holding out for huge money now – by the time he’s 30 his body (and career) is going to be destroyed.

Surely, in the past racing was more than dangerous, it was deadly. However, with the safety improvements that have been made, fatalities are very rare and you also don’t typically see a lot of career-ending injuries. Of course, this drives up the supply of drivers which exacerbates the supply/demand balance.

I think I went on a tangent here at some point. Sorry.