[quote=Russell]Allan, I apologize for saying football. This time I was wrong to single out football. All sports.Atheletes across the board must function as a reasonably normal student.
Yes, if the NFL wants them sign em up. If they aren’t ready but might be someday, take care of them with minor leagues or whatever.[/quote]
Russell: But I’d opine that most student-athletes ARE student-athletes. Yes, I realize for every Stanford or Notre Dame, there are programs that are sub-standard, but I’d imagine that most collegiate athletes play for love of the sport, and not because they’re seeing dollar signs post-college.
The numbers bear this out. Pro sports, like the NBA, MLB and NFL, are comprised of fairly small numbers of players (compared to the collegiate ranks) and most collegiate players, especially those from smaller colleges and universities, probably know full well that their chance of being a pro athlete is an exceptionally small one and thus are playing because they love their sport.
I would have killed for the chance to play college football, but I never got the chance. I would have killed to play, not because I thought the NFL was waiting for me, but because I would have loved to have competed at that level and to see if I had what it took to be there. I think every Pop Warner kid (or Little League kid or AYSO kid) dreams of the “bigs”, but, by the time you hit high school, you realize that the odds are strongly against you.
