“For me, and I've been on record saying it, let's create two leagues: one for players who want the college football experience, and another for those that want to get paid, have the NFL help fund it, whatever. Guys who don't want to go to school to get an education, let them go to work.”
– Dabo Swinney, head football coach at Clemson University, winner of national championships in 2017 and 2019
A young man wants to play college football. Why? Does he love the game? Does he want a scholarship? Does he seek the prestige of playing for a big school? Or, does he just want to be challenged? The decision to play college football requires a thorough understanding of the commitment – that includes examining options and doing some serious homework.
Welcome to the college football option edition of my blog.
The NCAA reports (2020) that nearly eight million students currently participate in high school athletics in the United States. 1,006,013 are high school football players.
For the lucky few high school football players who are talented enough to make it into the college ranks, football offers some great opportunities. They are considered a “lucky few” because according to the NCAA, the 2020 Probability of competing beyond high school figures out to 7.3% with 2.9% of those players going on to Division I schools.
First of all, let's establish that only about 1% or 1 out of every 92 senior high school football players will get a full scholarship to play at the highest level in the NCAA FBS according to the National Federation of State High School Associations statistics. FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) programs are allowed 85 scholarships on its roster at any given time, and generally can sign up to 25 players per year.
Despite the odds, playing college football sounds like a hell of a deal, doesn't it? Free tuition, room and board, and early enrollment ahead of their student peers are just a few perks that student-athletes receive through their scholarship. Not to mention 4–5 daily meals, access to their own training facilities (often state of the art training and medical facilities), and preferential treatment, which includes 24/7 access to tutors, mentors, and top alumni.
But wait, you should also consider some other obligations.
Time and Effort
How about the 5–6 A.M. wake up calls to train, the fact that university majors are chosen around their training schedules, and the fact that much of your time is allocated to football?
Time works differently for college athletes, no thanks to the so-called limitations the NCAA places on practice and competition time. These measures are detailed in the 2019-2020 version of the Division I Manual under Bylaw 17.1.7.1, which states: “A student-athlete’s participation in countable athletically related activities shall be limited to a maximum of four hours per day and 20 hours per week.”
However, Katie Lever, M.A. reports about the shortfalls of the 20-hour rule …
Bylaw 17.02.14, lists required athletically related activities, defined as “any activities, including those that are countable in the daily and weekly limitations, that are required of a student-athlete.” These activities are not considered countable toward the NCAA’s 20-hour limit (the NCAA published a chart that illustrates the differences between countable/noncountable time here), and the manual then provides a non-exhaustive list of required (but non-countable) activities:
· Compliance meetings
· Organized team promotional activities
· Recruiting activities, including student-host duties
· Media activities
· Fundraising events
· Community service events
· Team-building activities
· Travel to and from away-from-home competition
In short, activities such as scheduled practices, competition days, and film sessions are considered countable, while the activities listed above are not.
(Katie Lever. Flaws of the 20-Hour Rule.” LRT Sports. November 18, 2021.)
Injuries
And, don't forget about the countless injuries collegiate football players endure. “The overall injury rate in NCAA football is 8.1 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures to games and practices combined,” states the NCAA.org football injuries report.
In the NCAA there are 20,718 football injuries a year, and of those, 841 are spinal injuries. There are around 4,000 knee injuries per year in collegiate sports, which can cost around $11,000 to repair and leaves the athlete vulnerable to further injuries.
One serious injury is recently receiving much more attention – concussion.
Concussions are common injuries in young athletes, but diagnosis and treatment remain a challenge. Medical experts are increasingly concerned that repeated head traumas could lead to heightened risk of neurological conditions such as CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) – a fatal brain disease.
New studies show that concussion incidence and HIE among college football players are disproportionately higher in the preseason than regular season, and most concussions and HIE occur during football practices, not games. Strategies to prevent concussion and HIE have important implications to protecting the safety and health of football players at all competitive levels.
There is now an ongoing debate about regulating safety in football training, with experts asking: Why aren’t college football stakeholders doing more, and following in the footsteps of both the NFL and high school programs to make safety guidelines for practice more stringent?
(Michael A McCrea, Alok Shah, et al. “Opportunities for Prevention of Concussion and Repetitive Head Impact Exposure in College Football Players: A Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) Consortium Study.” JAMA Neurol. March 01, 2021.)
One report shows college football players don’t accurately estimate their risk of concussion or injury.
In the report, “Accuracy of U.S. College Football Players’ Estimates of Their Risk of Concussion or Injury,” authors Drs. Christine M. Baugh, Emily Kroshus, William P. Meehan III, Thomas G. McGuire and Laura A. Hatfield explore how college football players gauge their risk of serious injury. At a time of heightened concern regarding the short-term and long-term consequences of participating in contact sports, the authors wanted to assess how athletes understand their own risk for sports-related injuries.
(Lois Elfman. “Study: College Football Players Underestimate Risk of Concussion and Injury.” Diverse Issues In Higher Education. January 5, 2021.)
One of the researchers’ analytic strategies suggested that 43% of athletes underestimated their risk of injury and 42% underestimated their risk of concussion. Alternative analytic strategies suggested that 91% of athletes underestimated their risk of injury and 63% underestimated their risk of concussion.
The report notes that many college players underestimate the risk of football-related injury in general and concussions specifically, even though 34% reported sustaining at least one suspected concussion in the previous football season.
The researchers said this underestimation of concussion and injury risk raises ethical considerations about informed decision-making.
Minor injuries like pulled muscles and sprains are easily handled by university medical staff. But for serious injuries, athletes can face challenges such as securing long-term treatment, determining insurance coverage, and negotiating with healthcare providers.
Chronic injuries? According to a 2017 article in Sports Health, 67% of a group of former Division I athletes who sustained a major injury and 50% reported chronic injuries, a finding that was 2.5 times higher than that seen in non-athletes. While former football players were the most represented sport of the group studied, it also contained athletes from diving, baseball and soccer.
In terms of cardiovascular disease risk and overall health, a previous life as a highly fit, competitive athlete is much less important than a current regimen of physical activity.
Former athletes who had stopped exercising had an increased risk of cardiovascular disease compared to students that were inactive in college but picked up exercise later in life. In one study, performance was significantly worse for former college athletes compared with non-athletes for percent body fat, mile time, sit-to-stand test, and a push-up test. Unfortunately, as this research suggests, the most accomplished athletic individuals often lose their capacity to stay active later in life.
(Ian McMahan. “Athletes Are Paying the Physical Price of Playing College Sports.” Sports Ilustrated. October 31, 2017.)
Insurance And Payments
Today, the organization requires every student-athlete to have health insurance. For most athletes, that coverage is provided by a parent's health insurance plan. The NCAA also supplies every athlete with catastrophic injury coverage, but that policy does not come into effect until the cost of treatment exceeds $90,000.
(Dean Golembeski. “College Athletes Often Bear the Cost of Injuries and Insurance.” bestcolleges.com. September 10, 202.)
Additionally, the NCAA also has an insurance program available for elite athletes known as the Exceptional Student-Athlete Disability Insurance program. "The program enables qualifying student-athletes, as approved by the program administrator, to purchase a disability insurance contract with preapproved financing, if necessary. This program will provide the student-athlete with the opportunity to protect against future loss of earnings as a professional athlete due to a disabling injury or sickness that may occur during the collegiate career," the NCAA states.
(Dean Golembeski. “College Athletes Often Bear the Cost of Injuries and Insurance.” bestcolleges.com. September 10, 202.)
But this confusing and limited array of insurance programs falls short in the eyes of those athletes who dream of playing professionally. To protect potential future income they might lose as the result of an injury, some elite athletes acquire what's known as a loss-of-value (LOV) insurance policy.
The Bottom Line For a College Player Going On
If you are a college athlete expecting to play professional football, the practicing, studying, and sweating may lead to dedicating your life to an outcome that never happens. It can be a dream that you have had since childhood that ends in an instance and cannot be resurrected.
That's the reality for many college players who set their sights on being able to receive the opportunity to play in the National Football League.
For 98.4% of collegiate football players, they will never see another snap after their last eligible collegiate football game. The NCAA estimates the probability of competing in professional football (NCAA to Pro) at 1.6% (2019). 98.4% of college football players never make the pros.
And, If You Make It To the NFL ...
What if a player makes it to the NFL? Stars in the NFL are raking in the cash, but the average salary in the NFL is only $860,000 – far underneath the $2 million that gets more promotion.
The risks of long-term injury? Longer NFL careers and certain playing positions appear to each spell greater long-term risk for serious cognitive problems such as confusion, memory deficits, depression and anxiety in former football players, according to a new report published Aug. 30 in The American Journal of Sports Medicine.
(“Number of Years in NFL, Certain Positions Portend Greater Risk for Cognitive, Mental Health Problems in Former Players.” The Football Players Health Study. Harvard University. August 30, 2019.)
Dr. Ilan Danan, a sports neurologist and pain management specialist at the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute, says chronic pain can affect a retired player's confidence, self-worth and ability to integrate in family activities.
So, is the fame of playing in the NFL worth all the effort and sacrifice? James A. Holstein, Richard S. Jones, and George E. Koonce Jr. conclude in their book Is There Life After Football? (2015) that, despite the challenges players face, it is possible for players to find success after leaving the NFL if they have the right support, education, and awareness of what might await them. But players themselves must also resist being totally engulfed by the NFL culture in which they live.
College Football Players Profile
Purdue's RK Russell paints this picture of his college football career.
“In my four years with Purdue’s football team, I tore ligaments, broke bones, lifted four times my weight a hundred times over, studied football more than my academics, rose before the sun, and stayed up long past its fall in the hope of making it to the NFL. I wasn’t the only one. Everyone on the roster – around 85 other young men – made the same sacrifices with the same hopes. As my tenure was coming to an end, it became obvious that fewer than 10% of us would get an invite to an NFL training camp, let alone an actual contract offer.
“And even if you did get that contract, you were hardly set up for life. I was the highest-ranked prospect on our campus and one of the few players to be drafted by an NFL team … and my professional career last three years. I earned good money, but nowhere near enough to retire on – and I was one of the lucky few who got a chance to play professionally. For the players who don’t make it – and that’s the vast majority of them – there is hardly enough time, resources, or care to prepare them for a future beyond football.
“On the day school started we always had a meeting to discuss what we wanted to accomplish as a team for the year. As student-athletes, the meeting had to incorporate our academic goals. If the meeting was an hour, the academic portion would constitute 10 minutes covering the minimum we needed to achieve academically to be eligible to play football.
“And anyone who wanted to take the 'student' in 'student-athlete' seriously was in for a struggle. We weren’t allowed to take classes past 2 pm in case they interfered with practice. Likewise, summer internships were off the table as they could conflict with training camp. Some classes were unavailable because it was believed the requirements were too strenuous when combined with an athlete’s schedule …
“Anyone who believes a free education – one that me and my teammates couldn’t even fully utilize due to our athletic obligations – gives universities permission to exploit their athletes should remember that our education isn’t free. We worked for our education by bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to our schools. And we also sacrificed our bodies – our biggest assets – in our pursuit to go pro.”
(RK Russell. “The main lesson I was given as a college football star? Sports trump academics.” The Guardian. September 01, 2021.)
Russell concludes that many college athletes, including him, come from single-parent, low-income homes and are one of the first in their extended family to attend university. When they enter higher education, they have little idea how to navigate the terrain.
Russell concludes from his own experience: “Academic advisors and coaches need to look for creative ways to allow student-athletes to optimize their time in college and prepare them for the most likely outcome – a regular 9-to-5 job rather than a multimillion dollar NFL or NBA contract.”
To close, former UCLA and NFL safety Bret Lockett posts the following issues that college football players find themselves facing:
Most collegiate football players lack the skill-set necessary to join the workplace.
Most collegiate football players choose a major that does not interfere with their collegiate football schedule. At UCLA, the bulk of majors chosen by football players are Political Science, Sociology, Communications, History, and Geography, all insignificant and inapplicable compared to the real skills needed obtain a mid-level paying job. Footballs grueling in-season schedule and standard off-season workout agenda forbids players to take courses that would allow them to develop skills that they could apply to the workplace.
A study completed by Journal World stated, “51% of the players on the Baylor Football team majored in general studies, compared with just 1% of all other undergraduates. Therefore, these student-athletes must find a way to obtain these skills elsewhere and on their own time, which rarely ever happens.
Most have not developed life skills.
Most college students apply to several colleges, have the opportunity to study abroad, and the freedom to obtain college internships. For the majority of collegiate football players, they did not have to apply to the university (outside of signing a few documents), and have never had a real job outside of playing football.
Quintessential tasks such as opening a bank account and applying for a credit card, which are norms for most college students, are uncommon for the average collegiate football player. A friend once told me, “I had to help guys on the football team deposit their scholarship checks because they did not have a bank account.” So much of their time is consumed with football that they fail to gain the adequate life experiences to succeed after their career is over.
The average career for an NFL player is 3.5 years and they never retire on their terms.
Most NFL rookies will barely make it four seasons, get cut several times, and not make steady income during their career.
Players fail to leverage the brand of the NFL. They also fail to market and brand themselves appropriately while playing in the league.
Unlike basketball, football players wear a helmet which hinders their average exposure on television. Not to mention each team carries an active roster of 53 players. So unless you happen to be the star “1st round draft pick,” or an overlooked free agent that breaks into the world of stardom, the chances of celebritism such as the likes of Tom Brady are far from realistic. Even more rare is being able to garner regional endorsement dollars, let alone a national campaign.
(Bret Lockett. “4 Reasons Why NFL Players Struggle Transitioning from the NFL to Life After Football.” Medium. May 19, 2019.)
No comments:
Post a Comment