OK all of you moms and dads out there who are bending, folding, molding and manipulating your sons and daughters with visions of scholarships and big paydays dancing in your heads, a word of advice: You’re probably chasing smoke.
Your odds of hitting the lottery are almost as good as the chance that your offspring is going to be awarded a grant-in-aid to an NCAA school.
And if you’re thinking beyond that, you’re sadly misguided. Better to make sure your kids get their BS or MBA than to spend all of that money on trying to get them to the NBA, NFL or MLB.
The NCAA has just released the results of a study that ought to have you monitoring your kid’s GPA instead of his or her ERA.
You’re out there and you know who you are. We know you, too. We hear all about how the perceived lack of publicity is hurting your child’s chances of getting a scholarship. The write-ups aren’t big enough, the headlines aren’t big enough, there are not enough pictures. So you’re offspring is destined to a life in some menial job. But that’s fodder for another column on another day.
This is about exactly how skinny the chances are that a scholastic athlete will make it onto a roster at an NCAA school and how those chances shrink even further when it comes to making it to the pros.
Pick a sport, any sport.
Let’s start with baseball, since many see that as the easiest way to big cars and big money.
According to the NCAA study, there are 470,671 boys playing that game in high school and 8,219 of those will be on an NCAA institution’s roster as a freshman. By the time they’re seniors, nearly 2,000 of them will no longer be on the roster. Of the 6,393 remaining, 600 will get drafted. So the numbers show that 6.1 percent of high school baseball players make it to an NCAA school and 9.4 percent of those sign a pro contract. Overall, it works out that for every 200 boys playing high school baseball, one will go in the baseball draft. One. That comes out to .45 percent.
And that’s the best odds you can get.
In football, it starts with 1,071,775 players in high school. That shrinks to 17,501 making it onto a roster as a freshman and dwindles to 13,612 making it to their senior year. Of that number, 250 will get drafted. Breaking it down even further, approximately eight out of every 10,000 boys playing high school football will eventually be taken in the NFL draft. That works out to .08 percent. How do you like those odds?
Right now, the focus is on Ohio State freshman Greg Oden making the leap from the Buckeyes to the NBA. He’s in a miniscule minority.
Here’s the rundown on how hard it is for a high school basketball player to get his hands on NBA money. It starts with 546,335 boys playing high school basketball. That number shrinks to 16,571 playing hoops in college, of whom 44 will be drafted. Which means that 1.2 percent of collegiate basketball players will go to the pros and .03 percent of all high school male basketball players will get paid to play. That’s three out of every 10,000.
For women roughly three out of every 100 high school players get to an NCAA roster and of those, one percent makes it to the WNBA, meaning that one out of every 5,000 girls playing high school basketball will wind up on an NBA team.
Do you see where this is going, or has gone? Give your child every advantage you can to help them succeed at their chosen sport at their age level but only with the idea that you want them to do the best they can with the ability they’ve been given.
And while you’re at it, make sure they get the same amount of attention and encouragement to do well in the classroom.
If you’re going to throw down $100 for a hitting instructor, make sure you are willing to spend the same amount for a math tutor.
Then they might get their name in the paper for making the honor roll. And maybe they’ll qualify for an academic scholarship in the process.
-Ron Bracken
Wrestling Gear
