Some college athletes play like adults but read like 5th graders

[jeffx]

^Co-sign on the above, especially the last sentence.

Those early years are critical. Parents not stressing education, combined with shitty schools, poverty and bad, crime-ridden neighborhoods - how's a kid supposed to learn surrounded by all that negative shit?

[wr50l]

This is why I appreciate the guys like Andrew Luck and RGIII. They aren't just dicking around playing ball, waiting to cash in while not giving a fuck that they are one torn achilles away from no scholarship and no education.

(Luck got a Bachelor's in Architecture, RGIII got a Bachelor's in PoliSci and began a Master's in Communications or something like that...)

That being said, if you know you're going to be a top whatever draft pick in any sport, the smart thing to do is bounce. Take that money now, play till you cant. School will be there when you're down and sitting on however many millions you earned. Heck if you're a flameout early in your pro career, that top-pick rookie money should be more than enough to get you by while you go back to school - unless you're a dumbass in which case school probably isn't in your plans anyways...

But Luck and RG3 clearly got a good upbringing and a fair chance, they actually have the skills required to get a degree without "assistance". If it wasn't for athletic talent the dingbats going to college without the ability to read would otherwise just be on America's welfare scrapheap.

Let's face it, these guys are essentially professional football players as soon as they leave high school; if it wasn't for college football, there would be at least one other large professional league nationwide. I think it's actually unfair in a way that these guys generate money for companies (sorry, charities) without fair pay. Every year spent playing college is a year spent risking potentially millions in possible career earnings on not tearing their achilles as you say. It is probably the most dangerous apprenticeship out there.

Even if Luck for example got a career ending injury in college and had a degree to fall back on, a nice job to be sure, but he'd be losing millions of dollars as a result of the system. He's one of the smart ones. Imagine the outcome for the ones who can't even read.

[jeffx]

^Preach it brother. Let's cut the bullshit - big-time college sports is a cold-blooded business, generating millions. And if a business is using my skills, name & likeness to sell its product, I want my fucking cut. That's the American way.

Now football is unique - unless he's a freak of nature, an 18 or 19 year old isn't ready for the brutality of the NFL. But basketball is different. Like Coach Cal said, if a kid wants to make me rich, he stays. If he wants to make himself and his family rich, he leaves.

[NAHSTE]

some are just physical beasts athletically inclined and that's fine. But no one knows if you can play college or pro ball in the 5th/6th grade. It had nothing to do with being an athlete back then. It just means you were not paying attention and no one in your family or school helped encourage you to learn.

heck, how enabled do you have to be to not have a 10th grade reading level that would at least make college a tolerable possibility.

if you are taught to read well in the 1st through 4th grade it usually carries over to the rest of your life and schooling

Right, it's not a problem exclusive to athletes or big time athletics. There was a recent report that said 80% of NYC high school grads could not read at an adequate level. We have gotten really bad at educating our youth in this country, and it's a damn shame.

[jeffx]

Right, it's not a problem exclusive to athletes or big time athletics. There was a recent report that said 80% of NYC high school grads could not read at an adequate level. We have gotten really bad at educating our youth in this country, and it's a damn shame.

...and there's plenty of blame to go around - parents, teachers, politicians, the bureacracy known as the Board of Ed and even the kids themselves.

[ram29jackson]

...and there's plenty of blame to go around - parents, teachers, politicians, the bureacracy known as the Board of Ed and even the kids themselves.

and the State of Georgia