[Most ‘student athletes’] not only graduate with degrees not worth the paper they’re written on; they actually enter college aiming to do nothing but make themselves more marketable to professional teams – as no less a person than last night’s star, Cardale Jones, asserted in a refreshingly honest tweet years ago:
‘Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come here to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.’ (8:43 AM – 5 Oct 12)
Of course, classes could indeed prove pointless for Jones now that he’s a national champion quarterback. The only lesson left for him to learn is that he must strike while the iron is hot and go pro.
(“Ohio Buckeyes Trample Oregon Ducks to Win NCAA Football National Championship,” The iPINIONS Journal, January 13, 2015)
Alas, he failed to learn this lesson. For here is the pithy way Cardale announced, during a LeBronesque press conference on Thursday, that he’s taking his talents back to Ohio:
[The NFL] was out of the question. A first-round draft pick means nothing to me without my education.
(ESPN, January 16, 2015)
With this announcement, Cardale became the poster boy for (the idealized notion of) student athletes. This of course is ironic — given his infamous tweet about going to school “to play Football [not] to play school.” Arguably, that made him the poster boy for “one and done” athletes who deem it pointless to stay in school if they stand any chance of being drafted into the professional leagues.
In any event, I respect his decision. But, given my instruction, it would be remiss of me not to offer just a few more instructive, clarifying points:
- Playing in the NFL is no more anathema to getting an education than playing in the NCAA, especially considering the amount of time student athletes dedicate to sports at Division 1 colleges, like Ohio State. Moreover, many athletes have completed (and are completing) their education while playing professional sports. This makes Cardale’s claim about staying in school to complete his seem shockingly naive.
- The best way to prepare for a career in the NFL is to play in the NFL — as any first-round draft pick, who completed his four-years of indentured servitude in college, will attest.
- It smacks of a perverse form of paternalism to question a 21-year-old football player’s mental and emotional ability to handle all that comes with suddenly making millions (especially if he grew up dirt poor — as Cardale did). After all, teenage entertainers handle the same every day. At least nobody can question the 6’-5”/250-pound Cardale’s physical ability to handle playing in the NFL.
- Cardale claims he sought advice from family members and close friends about whether to go or stay. But this is unfair, almost to the point of being cruel. After all, even if they wanted to say, “take the money and run, fool,” they probably feared coming across like parasites who just can’t wait to live off Cardale, his education be damned.
- Cardale claims he also sought advice from his coach. But, for obvious reasons, his coach has more vested interest in having him stay in school than his teachers.
- Cardale would have been far better served if he had sought advice from men who have been in his shoes, like superstars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant – neither of whom ever spent a day in college. What’s more, given his declared interest in studying financial planning, I’m sure LeBron would’ve been happy to hook Cardale up with his private tutor, multibillionaire investor extraordinaire Warren Buffet.
But I wish him well – as he continues doing far more for Ohio State than Ohio State can do for him at this point….
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