If they want to be pro, let them go

Why do professional sports insist on using college athletics as their minor leagues when athletes should be free to choose their own direction even if it doesn’t mean college.

Now before you get wild and start saying, Duane is against higher education, let me say that I realize that higher education is not only important but a must for most people who plan to compete in the dog-eat-dog job market. And, it is for that reason I question the policy of most professional athletics, especially football and basketball, that requires high school graduates to do at least some college.

First off, baseball can draft right out of high school and it becomes the decision of the draftee as to whether he wants to go ahead and enter the developmental farm clubs or go to college. This is not true for the NFL and NBA where the courts have upheld their banning of athletes just out of high school. While I’d like to think the reason for this is because these folks care about education, the actual motivation we all know is feeding the high grossing major sports with top notch athletes so they can be the game of the week on ESPN. That’s why baseball doesn’t do it since it’s not a high grossing college sport when compared to the cash cows of NCAA football and basketball.

This requirement actually hurts the marginal athlete the worst, since the scholarship being used by a kid who is simply biding his time until he can go pro could have gone to the athlete who will never go pro in anything except the private or business sector. The year or two this blue chipper wastes partying and blowing off exams could have been put to good use by a marginal player who, although never scoring a touchdown, could have used that scholarship to learn a trade and be a productive citizen.

By requiring high school athletes to go to college you also expose them to perhaps seeing their stock drop instead of rise. There’s been many an athlete who has blown out a knee in the freshman year or, in the Pacman era, went afoul of the law, which is really frowned upon now by teams who are risking millions to draft and sign these kids. Hey, college comes without parental supervision and any real money, so there are temptations a poor college kid feels that a multi-millionaire pro athlete does not.

Now before folks get all high and mighty, let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Would we look down on a kid genius who is recruited right out of high school by Microsoft? No we wouldn’t. We would call that seizing a great opportunity. Yet when a kid wants to come out after his freshman year we go on about him not getting his education.

Folks, these kids will earn in signing bonus alone more money than you, me and our whole families will earn in a lifetime. Don’t worry about the blue chippers, if they want an education later they can buy a college. I’m more worried about the kids that don’t get to go to college because some program has wasted that spot on a kid who doesn’t want to be there and will be gone long before graduation.

The bottom line is it boils down to greed on the part of the universities who fund fat-cat salaries on the sweat of college athletes, offering them little in return. If nothing else, let’s do like baseball. Let them be eligible for the draft, see where they fall, and then if they want to go on to college, so be it. If you’re being given $10 million just to sign your name on the line, who needs college? That’s enough tuition money for an entire small town if they decide to go.