College Athletes

For high-school and college athletes across the country, there is no dream more common than the dream of stepping onto a field, court, or rink, having your name on the back of your professional team's jersey, and having thousands and thousands of fans wildly chanting your name. In fact, it is a dream so transfixing that it has athletes eager to hit the "Fast-Forward" button and skip through the years, which according to many, are the "best years of your life"; College. Forget the fact that one's college years may be the best years of one's life and focus on the sad fact that many a student-athlete (primarily in football and men's basketball) do not finish all four years of college and earn a degree, and many who do receive their degrees fail to "earn" them (not mentioning the field of study, which is, typically, not ideal). At this point in the equation, we have either a year of college foregone, a less than ideal degree, or even the failure to earn a degree. If we add on the statistic that the average career in the NFL is three and a half years, and five years for an NBA player, it becomes clear that the solution is disheartening, to say the least. Furthermore, let us not forget that these are athletes, who regularly engage in physical activity, and are more than likely to have severe injuries throughout their careers which severely hinder their future lives. Adding on the simple variable that many professional athletes come from lower-class backgrounds and do not know how to correctly manage their newly-found wealth only makes the equation more bleak. The list of problems is so long that it has nearly exhausted my list of conjunction words. However, as I said earlier, many of the degrees "earned" by those who do remain in college for four years fail to earn a degree in a field which, following the athletes professional career, will actually allow the ex-athlete to succeed, or in certain cases, even survive. Unfortunately, the success of a few has overshadowed the underlying problems of the majority in professional sport. While there is no way to ensure that student-athletes remain in school for the complete four years, and obtain a use able degree, there must be a greater emphasis placed on the importance of the "student" element of "student-athlete". There are a schools who do manage to accomplish the extra-ordinary feat of high graduation rates, and there exist individuals such as Myron Rolle, the Florida State star safety and Rhodes Scholar who perfectly balance their academic and athletic careers, but simply put, there are not enough. The simple statistic that "players with degrees earn 20 to 30% more than players who don't have degrees. They also have a career that lasts about 50% longer" (nflplayers.com) should be enough of a deterrent to fore go college for a professional career. Sadly, the current equation of many professional athlete's career's does not add up;

Failure to earn degree (Foregoing senior year for professional career) + Short average length of professional career + Added health risks + Poor management of money +Difficulty of finding work after career = The Sad Reality.