Go pro in something other than sports. A career in professional sports is a long shot. That’s what we’ve been saying all along!
Odds of high school players going pro: A look at the data (J.M. Soden, Yahoo Sports)
Wrote J.M. Soden: “You may have seen the NCAA commercials that claim just about all of their student-athletes will be turning pro in something other than sports. It’s not just a catchy slogan, but also a reality. With players leaving school early at alarming rates, the NCAA is trying to educate young athletes on the importance of an education.”
He goes on to describe best-case scenarios (baseball at 0.44 percent turning pro) and worst cases (men’s and women’s basketball, 0.03 percent – much of it overseas).
It’s an excellent reminder.
One observation bears some amplification: “Even if high school athletes are unlikely to reach the professional ranks, an athletic scholarship can provide an excellent chance for a high quality education at little or no cost.”
That’s true for those who actually receive athletically related financial aid, but those opportunities are rather limited in their own right. Further, financial aid in most sports is not an all-expense-paid proposition.
The best approach: Study hard and make good grades.
Basketball from a different angle. Just when you thought you had figured out the real-world basics of basketball, along comes the Duke engineering school to complicate your life.
Circular evolution in the NCAA tournament (Eamonn Brennan, ESPN)
“The emergence of hierarchical design is illustrated with the rankings of university basketball programs,” wrote Duke professor Adrian Bejan. “Although basketball rankings have the same character as the university rankings, there is no correlation between the two rankings. Academic excellence and basketball excellence are two different architectures on the same area, like the flow of humanity (demography) and the flow of water (river basins). Together, they show how the evolution of sports allows us to witness biological evolution in our life time.”
The paper is entitled “The Natural Design of Heirarchy: Basketball Vs. Academics.”
And you thought bracketology was complicated.
Basketball coaches and $$$. Tom Van Riper of Forbes looked at what factors might lead to high salaries for basketball coaches.
The highest-paid college basketball coaches (Tom Van Riper, Forbes)
It’s interesting enough, even if it does describe the familiar area of supply and demand.
As with all stories like this, a little discussion of sustainability would be welcome. “More” and “bigger” aren’t likely to be the long-term answers to college athletics funding questions.
