“Be a Student-Athlete and the Student Comes First.”
During a guest appearance on a podcast recently, I asked the host who is a long-time college coach and professional scout, “During all of your years as a high school and college coach, how many of your players worked a job for four or more months in a year?”
He immediately held up his hands to form a big zero.
This emphasizes the sad reality of how few high school athletes are educated about how to determine and develop their marketable skills and how those skills relate to their goals and passions in life. This discernment is essential to an informed decision about whether college is necessary at all, and if so, which one is the best choice for them.
Athletic careers can be over in a second for a variety of reasons. Yet, few athletes ask themselves, “If my playing days were over or if I were not an athlete, would this college be the best fit for me given my other career goals?” If not, the athlete should not have attended that college to begin with.
Typically, elite high school athletes spend almost all of their “free time” training and playing sports with no balance in their life. Their college choice is based on which schools offer them the best financial incentive package after the athlete attends a “showcase.”
The showcase-first process is flawed because not all colleges offer the same quality of education and preparation for the working world and not all careers can be studied at every college. If a major is not offered, a student cannot study it. Not all academic departments between colleges or, even within a college, are of the same quality with regard to their professors, facilities, internship and job placement opportunities, etc. College may not even be necessary for the best career choice for a particular athlete.
If college is necessary, the student-athlete should first determine what college is the best fit academically for their possible career paths and then attend baseball camps at those colleges or showcases where coaches from those colleges will be present.
A student’s goal should be to graduate college with a degree that affords them many high-quality choices to pursue a life-long career the person is passionate about. The college degree alone only certifies that the student completed the school’s curriculum for a particular major. The curriculum and the work experience afforded by the school’s placement department, or lack thereof, may not be respected by graduate schools or the working world. And the degree certainly does not certify the student will be happy in the career choices that the degree can offer them.
Approximately, 40% of college students today drop out and 46% of the students who graduate work in a career that does not require the degree they received. 33% work in a career that does not require a degree at all! Only .5% of all high school baseball players will ever be drafted by an MLB team even if they play baseball in college.
With the exception of a very few top athletes in a very limited number of sports, the average financial incentive package pays an athlete only a fraction of their annual tuition and expenses. Therefore, the scholarship only partially finances the debt the student-athlete will incur to earn a degree they may never use or do not need.
Today, an athlete cannot even be assured the coaches and their teammates will be the same year-to-year because the fluidity of the transfer portal is causing coaches to leave the profession and teammates to transfer to other programs. If athletes prioritized a career path and academics over sports, they could tell a coach who is recruiting them that they will stay with the program regardless of money or playing time because their enrollment at the college was based first on the ability of the college to afford them the best education to pursue their career outside of the sport. This may be a scale-tipping factor for whether that athlete receives a scholarship over another one who is prioritizing money and the sport.
Elite athletes deserve to be compensated for their talent. There is nothing inherently wrong with scholarship money. Athletes just need to be careful that when they are considering it, they do not prioritize short-term money over their long-term career goals and happiness. In many cases, the short-term scholarship money may just be an enticement that in the long-term will get them nothing more than a purely symbolic piece of paper.
During a guest appearance on a podcast recently, I asked the host who is a long-time college coach and professional scout, “During all of your years as a high school and college coach, how many of your players worked a job for four or more months in a year?”
He immediately held up his hands to form a big zero.
This emphasizes the sad reality of how few high school athletes are educated about how to determine and develop their marketable skills and how those skills relate to their goals and passions in life. This discernment is essential to an informed decision about whether college is necessary at all, and if so, which one is the best choice for them.
Athletic careers can be over in a second for a variety of reasons. Yet, few athletes ask themselves, “If my playing days were over or if I were not an athlete, would this college be the best fit for me given my other career goals?” If not, the athlete should not have attended that college to begin with.
Typically, elite high school athletes spend almost all of their “free time” training and playing sports with no balance in their life. Their college choice is based on which schools offer them the best financial incentive package after the athlete attends a “showcase.”
The showcase-first process is flawed because not all colleges offer the same quality of education and preparation for the working world and not all careers can be studied at every college. If a major is not offered, a student cannot study it. Not all academic departments between colleges or, even within a college, are of the same quality with regard to their professors, facilities, internship and job placement opportunities, etc. College may not even be necessary for the best career choice for a particular athlete.
If college is necessary, the student-athlete should first determine what college is the best fit academically for their possible career paths and then attend baseball camps at those colleges or showcases where coaches from those colleges will be present.
A student’s goal should be to graduate college with a degree that affords them many high-quality choices to pursue a life-long career the person is passionate about. The college degree alone only certifies that the student completed the school’s curriculum for a particular major. The curriculum and the work experience afforded by the school’s placement department, or lack thereof, may not be respected by graduate schools or the working world. And the degree certainly does not certify the student will be happy in the career choices that the degree can offer them.
Approximately, 40% of college students today drop out and 46% of the students who graduate work in a career that does not require the degree they received. 33% work in a career that does not require a degree at all! Only .5% of all high school baseball players will ever be drafted by an MLB team even if they play baseball in college.
With the exception of a very few top athletes in a very limited number of sports, the average financial incentive package pays an athlete only a fraction of their annual tuition and expenses. Therefore, the scholarship only partially finances the debt the student-athlete will incur to earn a degree they may never use or do not need.
Today, an athlete cannot even be assured the coaches and their teammates will be the same year-to-year because the fluidity of the transfer portal is causing coaches to leave the profession and teammates to transfer to other programs. If athletes prioritized a career path and academics over sports, they could tell a coach who is recruiting them that they will stay with the program regardless of money or playing time because their enrollment at the college was based first on the ability of the college to afford them the best education to pursue their career outside of the sport. This may be a scale-tipping factor for whether that athlete receives a scholarship over another one who is prioritizing money and the sport.
Elite athletes deserve to be compensated for their talent. There is nothing inherently wrong with scholarship money. Athletes just need to be careful that when they are considering it, they do not prioritize short-term money over their long-term career goals and happiness. In many cases, the short-term scholarship money may just be an enticement that in the long-term will get them nothing more than a purely symbolic piece of paper.
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