With the college football playoff coming up the beginning of next year, the talk around the water cooler (yes, we actually have one) is about the NCAA and it's treatment of it's athletes.
One of my sports guys says that the NCAA takes advantage of it's athletes to the organization's financial betterment. In fact, according to a USA Today article, the NCAA generated 989 million dollars in fiscal year 2014. That's right, almost a billion dollars. After expenses, the organization cleared more than 80 million. Five hundred and forty seven million of those expenses went directly to Division I schools and conferences.
A balance sheet that would make any major corporation proud.
Now to the players. According to a recent NCAA poll, 52% of the Division I football players believe that they will play professional football. It’s a “self-bias phenomenon,” said Gershon Tenenbaum, a sports psychology professor at Florida State University.Tenenbaum said that this is exacerbated by the level of adulation that surrounds successful athletes. Some athletes, he said, may be well aware of the NCAA’s research, but “this does not alter their belief, because they’re thinking, ‘I am not a statistic.'". Mark Nagel, a professor of sports and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina added, “Good athletes get so consumed with playing their sports, it’s very difficult to take a step back and realize what else is going on,” Nagel said. “It’s commendable in some ways, because it’s really what they want to do. It’s an all-consuming passion.”
My sports guys says that the league takes advantage of this mentality to help keep it's pockets full. He cites Dexter Manley, former all-Pro of the Washington franchise as a example. He managed to play football at Oklahoma State University for four years while being functionally illiterate.
I get the argument from both sides. One the one hand you have a organization that's making straight cash homie like Randy Moss and for the players, a percentage of which comes from the more urban areas, a chance out of the environment.
Now for the reality. On both ends.
According to the NCAA's own data, Out of the 71, 291 athletes that played football at the collegiate level last year (Division I FBS - 230 teams, D1 FCS - 19 and Division II - 6 = 255 teams), 15,842 of those players were draft eligible. That's 4.5%. Out of that group, only 255 of them were drafted to the NFL. One player from a Canadian school was drafted. One other thing: out of the 255 players that were drafted, 172 of them was drafted from a 'big time" school (49 - SEC, ACC - 42, PAC12-34, BIG10 - 30 and BIG12 - 17).
By the way, these are just the football statistics.
How do I feel about this? I got just one word: choice. When I got to college, I knew that I was going to go professional in something, whether it was track or something else. And to paraphrase Avon Barksdale from the Wire said to Stringer: "....that decision is on you!"
