Studies, Sports and Life

It’s graduation time for schools and one of the million dollar questions that always arise from those in the world of sports is, “How far can one go with sports?” Aspiring athletes who play for their high school teams take sports so seriously as if it was going to be a career in the long run. They dream of making it to the professional world of sports and make the kind of money that our PBA players make. They even look further and make professional football as a goal but not here in the Philippines but the likes of Europe, Australia and a level lower in Asia. Worse is when some parents believe in the same way and count on their children to be the next Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant who will eventually solve all their financial problems. Their child-athlete has suddenly become the financial savior of the family without the child even knowing it. At the college level, student-athletes or in some cases “athlete-students,” have a more pressing concern of whether or not they’re good enough for the pro ranks. They’re praised and adored by sports fans since they happen to be the “superstars” of their team. But are they really good enough to make it to the pros?

 First things first. We need to settle down and accept reality. It’s a fact that a professional career in sports is not a sure-hit thing, even for the best athletes in either high school or collegiate sports. You can make your own survey and conclude easily that very small percentage of college athletes eventually turn professional and last as pro athletes. Let’s take basketball as an example since it’s the most popular sport in the country. Every year, all the UAAPs, NCAAs, CESAFIs and all the collegiate leagues of the world churn out basketball players who finish school. Some just breeze through school by just playing ball, nothing else. How many of them actually make it to the PBA? How many of them embark on a career in basketball? In fact, many players of college teams don’t even make it past first base after college. There are simple too few job opportunities vis-à-vis the number of athletes who graduate. There are twelve teams in the PBA, and assuming each team maintains a payroll of 18 players (including reserves), that’s the equivalent of only 216 players. Of the lot, how many opening “jobs” does a team have every year. All teams are already loaded with talent and can hardly make room for more unless you’re the next Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. And if there is an opening, somebody is also due to lose his job joining the hundreds of professional wannabees.

This has been said a million times before and will be stressed all the time. Athletes had better take their studies seriously and not rely on sports as a career on which one can raise a family, settle down and live a normal life. But how many college athletes actually follow this? How many ex-college athletes are now rotting since they never got to play professionally? And never took their studies seriously, leaving them inutile post-college?

 For the high school athletes who are going to college, they should also remember that there are very few slots for college sports. Being a superstar in high school sports doesn’t guarantee a successful sports career at the college level. But a good way to look at college sports is as an opportunity to get a college education for free (or partially subsidized). Aren’t tuition fees going up every year? If one is good enough to make it to a college team, then he should go all out for a slot but again, for a more noble purpose than wanting to make it as a pro athlete. I can still recall how many friends would happily declare how they had the opportunity to earn a degree for free at USC, U.P., Ateneo or De La Salle courtesy of an athletic scholarship. And when recognizing matter of factly that they didn’t have even a slight shot at the pros, they studied hard, became diligent students, and ended up as successful professionals not in sports, but in the corporate world or in business. Not bad, di ba? They not only earned themselves a good job but also helped their parents save by not spending for tuition fees and other college-related expenses. They even bragged how they also received a monthly allowance as college athletes, though little it might have been. At the end of the day, let’s all remember that sports isn’t the only thing that exists for aspiring student-athletes. And it can never become a long term career. Remember that pro athletes retire by the time they’re in their 30s and have to move on and find regular jobs or put up businesses on their own.

 “Go hard” is a common yell from coaches for their athletes and it’s the same for us today. Student-athletes ought to go hard in all departments: play, practice, studies and prayer.

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 Time-out: The BEST Center basketball clinic sponsored by Milo will be held May 11-16, 2015, at the SHS-Ateneo de Cebu Mango Avenue Campus Gym. For details, check out the page “BEST Center Sports Cebu” in Facebook.