Tag Archives: Sports

African-American Athletes Are Investing Too Much Into Sports

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African-American males look to professional sports superstars for their role models

The African-American athletes’ entire future rests upon a professional contract and nothing else matters.

Sports in the African-American community has always been viewed as a way out of the inner city and on to financial freedom.

 

Education doesn’t matter, world events doesn’t matter, the only thing that counts is that professional contract.

You can drive around any inner city in the country and you’ll see African-American young men throwing a football around on the city streets or playing basketball with some make-shift basketball hoop.

In the mornings, when young African Americans are on their way to school, instead of carrying their books and book bags they’re bringing footballs and basketballs to school because that’s their role model; books are just a requirement to get through the day.

There are very few role models in the inner cities. 

You don’t grow up in the African-American community where you’re living next to lawyers or doctors or even business owners; those people just do not exist in most inner city African-American communities.

African-American males look to professional sports superstars for their role models, believing that if they work really hard playing football or basketball that they can have millions of dollars and all the fame and success that comes from being a professional athlete.  Becoming a doctor or lawyer does not appeal to them or the so-called hip-hop generation of black males.

Everyone knows about Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant because those are the role models for African Americans.  These athletic superstars are on TV all the time, they have big-time major endorsement deals and this lifestyle is so fascinating and appealing to a lot of African Americans who believe that with hard work playing their sport, they can also live the lifestyle of the rich and famous black athlete.

Education does not seem as important if you play sports but without it, what kind of future are you going to have if you don’t beat the odds of being the one in a million who makes it to the pros?  African-American athletes are putting every ounce of the strength they have into sports without the thought that they may not make it to the pros. Even if they are a success in college many of them still leave a four year institution without a college degree.

The barber shop is an African-American gathering place in the inner city and the conversation is often about politics, community events and sports.  Young black kids are going into the barber shops getting haircuts and are being asked questions about what they want to be when you grow up?

Before the young black man can answer the question the members of the barbershop will already know the answer,  “you’re going to be a football player or you’re going to be a basketball superstar, right?”

It’s never about you’re going to grow up and get a law degree or medical degree or go off to a fancy college and get a high powered education to be whatever you want to be.  The conversation is about sports and what the local teams are doing.

There is a huge cultural difference between blacks and whites when it comes to sports. Whites grow up with the mindset of going to college to get an education and to one day have a career, maybe as a lawyer or a doctor.

It is not the same conversation with blacks in their community.  The conversation is all about music and fashion and becoming a sports star as their ticket out of the inner city.  The conversation is rarely about using education as a means to success.

Being a superstar in sports and music is a one in a million shot at the big time but what happens to the millions who never make it, who didn’t do enough in school to have something to fall back on if they didn’t win first place on American Idol or were the number one draft pick for the Chicago Bulls, now that is the question.

It seems to me that too much time and energy is spent on sports and only viewing that as their ticket on the yellow brick road to a better life.

These young African-American ballplayers are focused on going to a major college program because it can help them in their belief of going pro.  It’s all about going pro; getting that scholarship only gets them one step closer to becoming a professional athlete, it doesn’t bring them one step closer to getting a college degree.

I love sports but it’s a one in a million shot for African-American young men that need to focus on education to first, be able to become a businessman and to then become a leader and a role model in the African-American community.

The Middle School Student Athlete and the Future

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Should parents be taking the necessary steps to prepare middle school student athletes for high school athletics and recruiting?

In my opinion, parents should take action during the middle school years for these student athletes. I believe one of the most important things is to have a strong academic background while still in middle school.  When the student athlete reaches their freshman year of high school they need to be totally matured and prepared for academic life as a high school freshman.

Academics along with athletic skills are critical in the overall development of a middle school student athlete.  Remember, if you do not have strong academic skills from middle school and through high school you will become invisible to college coaches.

All student athletes, regardless of the sport, who are still in middle school love playing the sports that their involved in and it is no secret that these athletes will play their sport year round during the summers and every day if possible.  This is how athletes become very good athletes; by playing their sport on a consistent level. This is how you improve, how you get better every day.  Sometimes athletes with superior skills will overlook academics thinking it’s not a big deal to pick up a book and study or to be the top student in their class.

If a middle school student athlete has goals of being the best athlete that they can possibly be, then they also should have the same goals for inside the classroom.

The summers are an excellent time for athletic and academic development because this is the time of year where young up and coming athletes generally have a lot of time on their hands.  During the very hot summer days, student athletes could spend time either at the library or on the computer practicing up on their academic skills.  Practicing up on academic skills should become a habit just like going to the basketball court and shooting jump shots, working on dribbling and passing skills, and overall teamwork skills.

There is a long list of student athletes who did not take academics seriously, believing that somehow their superior athletic ability would make up for any academic short-comings. This is totally untrue.

Final thoughts: every athlete is going to be involved in some kind of summer camp or will play in different tournaments because that’s when regular athletes develop into good athletes and ultimately into great athletes but never overlook the importance of academics. That, along with superior athletic ability, is how you’re going to get into college.

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The Destruction of the High School Student Athlete

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For a great deal of high school student athletes in this country, sports means everything to them.  Athletics is a means of freedom for many young people and without it; there may not be hope for the future and some of them will struggle throughout their lives.

In my lifetime, I have come across many high school and college athletes who did not get the maximum potential out of their athletic careers.  Without achieving a certain level of greatness, many of these athletes experience a lifetime of disappointment and frustration.

Throughout the history of sports, many athletic careers have been destroyed, not by what you may think is the obvious reason, a career ending injury or a crime that sent them to jail or prison. No, and athletic career can be destroyed by a jealous or despicable high school coach who feel that it’s necessary to sabotage the student athlete’s dream of athletic success.

It does happen all the time; the athletic success derailed by a high school coach, school administrator or some unknown individual out for revenge or just plain jealousy.

There are millions of stories of high school student athletes who were extremely talented, but who received absolutely no help or guidance from their high school coach.  Those student athletes’ careers ended at the high school level all because of a mean and evil high school coach.

This kind of thing also happens in college, where you’ll have some jackass college coach who will do whatever it takes to ruin that athlete’s career.

I’ve seen it happen; a college coach will sit a player on the bench never to play that player.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes while in college, where players are frustrated with the system or the coach and they just quit.  Being a student athlete in college and you quit playing your sport that you’ve worked your entire life to be apart of is extremely devastating to that athlete.

The fact that you were forced to quit is sometimes a life changing decision because as athletes, we are trained to never quit-to never give up.  Athletes are conditioned to give everything they’ve got to their sport no matter what.

For an athlete to make the decision to quit in college is a horrible decision to make and no athlete should ever be placed in that situation, but it does happen and surprisingly it does not matter how big or small the college or university.

Sometimes there really is no life after sports for most of these young athletes. The reason I say that is because so many athletes put everything they’ve got into being the best they can be athletically.  When you work to develop your athletic skills from a very early age all away through high school and into college sports, it’s very hard to quit.

The devastating part about athletics is how ugly it could be.  For all the joy athletics can bring there is often a side that we don’t hear about; how careers end, how players end up lost without athletics in their lives.

I’ve known many athletes who were very talented, who were the absolute best at basketball, a star in football and baseball but they seemed to be fish out of water when they could no longer play their sport.  I believe the reason is because of the passion athletes have developed over a long period time towards their sport.

After a period of athletic development, the passion for sports turns into love and sometimes love is hard to give up.

The destruction of the high school student athlete starts in high school, that’s when everything counts towards college.  When you enter your freshman year of high school your academics count towards college and everything you do is recorded on your transcript which is a permanent record.

If you do poorly academically or are persuaded to take classes that are not going to help you get into college then this could have a harmful affect on student athletes’ academic futures.

A sport, to an athlete, is like oxygen to the rest of the world; without it you will not live very long.  I think sports have that kind of affect on athletes. Sometimes if you’re doing well athletically, it’s like you have more oxygen, you feel unstoppable without it, you go through life in slow motion always searching for that burst of oxygen.

Final thoughts: When athletes train themselves for a long period of time to become athletes, it’s almost hard to think about doing anything else in their life.  Hearing the cheering of a large crowd at a basketball game is an incredible sound and feeling.  You know they’re cheering for you because of a great play you made or something outstanding you did.  Nowhere else in life are you going to run across that experience! Only athletics can do that for you.

I think that’s why you see so many former athletes who are coaches or who are involved in some type sport; it is just so they can stay close to the game.

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5 Ideas That Could Revolutionize College Recruiting

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For the most part college recruiting is like a jigsaw puzzle with 100,000 pieces and sometimes some of the pieces don’t fit or even worse some of the pieces are missing.

Any parent or high school student athletes who are getting involved with the college recruiting process for the first time, my advice to you is to have plenty of money and give yourself plenty of time to make the college recruiting process work for you.

I thought I would come up with some ideas that could help revolutionize the college recruiting process.

1.  Give high school coaches more time to properly help student athletes with the college recruiting process. I think it is almost impossible for a high school coach, who may also work as a full-time school teacher, to effectively work with student athletes and their parents in the day to day details of college recruiting.  I believe the high school coach should be given an extra hour or two per day towards college recruiting.

2. The NCAA should ease up on the rules on when college programs can come out and evaluate high school student athletes. The reason I say this is to prevent talented student athletes from slipping through the cracks of the college recruiting process.  I believe if college programs had more time to evaluate a larger number of student athletes, it would be a huge benefit for the college programs and the student athletes.

3. Give parents more control and input in the college recruiting process. Maybe a parent can work closely with the high school coach with college recruiting.  For example, let’s say your daughter plays on the softball team and all the parents who come out to support the team would perhaps like it if a parent could be some sort of liaison between the parents and the coaches and could assist the coaches with college recruiting.

4.  I believe information is power; if more resources were available to parents about the college recruiting process then maybe there would not be as many problems. Maybe at the beginning of the school year, there could be a week-long seminar about the college recruiting process.  Many school districts could put their financial resources together and bring in college recruiting experts to discuss various ways to make the college recruiting process work.  If parents and high school coaches had more information and resources, it would effectively improve how student athletes are getting exposure to college programs.

5.  Employ or bring back old coaches who may have retired whose job could be to assist in college recruiting. There are many ex-high school and college coaches who could come in or maybe on a volunteer basis assist high school coaches with recruiting.  Who better to help understand the college recruiting process than maybe a former college coach who has knowledge on how the college recruiting process will work.  There are a lot of former coaches out there who are retired from school district or from coaching in general but just don’t want to sit around the house watching the grass grow. This would be an excellent opportunity for them to stay involved with young people.

Final thoughts: These ideas may not be totally unique but should give everyone something to think about on how we could change college recruiting.  The high school student athlete should not have their career end at the high school level.  Student athletes of all talent levels should be given an opportunity to be all that they can be at the college level.

There could be more creative ways to improve the college recruiting process from the player’s perspective, from the high school coach’s perspective and clearly from the parent’s point of view.  If all parties can work together and set aside egos and stupidity, then the players will be the ultimate winners in all of this.

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A College Scholarship Is Not In Your Future

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You’re not getting a college scholarship.

The number of athletic scholarships given out to high school athletes each year is very small. Many talented high school athletes think they are going to receive a full athletic scholarship.

The fact of the matter is, an athletic scholarship is not in the future for many of these high school athletes.

Just because you may happen to be the best athlete on your team or even in your home town does not guarantee you a full athletic scholarship.  I would think most high school athletes would have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting a full athletic scholarship.

There are limits to everything. There are only so many scholarships awarded each and every year at the major college level.

A college coach may really like you as an athlete and may really want you to be a member of their program but, they could like someone just as much as they like you but who do you think is going to get that scholarship?

If you happen to be the unfortunate one that’s not chosen to receive a full athletic scholarship, you more than likely would be asked to be a preferred walk-on which basically means they like you, but not that much.

Many high school student athletes would be willing to risk everything they’ve got to play at a major college program as a preferred walk-on with the hope of receiving a full scholarship the following year or maybe the year after.

Keep in mind, if you don’t receive an all expense paid education, you will have to apply for financial aid or pick up the costs to pay a for your college education as a preferred walk-on.

That’s too big of a risk for me!!!!!

The alternative is to play college sports at a division two or division three college programs.  Now many high school student athletes and parents may be somewhat turned off by those possibilities, but the reason you’re going to college in the first place is to get an education.

No, division two and division three college programs don’t play on television, you’re not going to show up every night on ESPN and your friends and family will more than likely never see you play a game on television and that really sucks.

In my opinion, that’s really no big deal because the bottom line for high school athletes is to go somewhere and have the opportunity to become a starter your entire athletic career.

You will remember your athletic experiences, good or bad, for the rest of your life so go somewhere and play and have fun doing so!

Jack’s Free Sports Picks: 1/15

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“911, What’s your emergency? “My High School Career is Over and I have No Colleges!”

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This situation happens to high school senior student athletes every year. Their high school career is over and they have no college offers at all.

No offers and you’re thinking to yourself, what when wrong? What did I miss? What did my coach do for me?  Did I go to enough camps, showcases? Did I get my tape out to college programs? Did I write to college programs? Did I email to college coaches? Did I make any phone calls to college coaches?

Did I return all the questionnaire that were sent to me from college programs? Did I do enough in the weight room or on the practice field? Did I play my best in every game? Did I take pay-offs? Was I coachable? Did I have the right attitude or was I a pain in the butt? Did I throw my money away with these worthless recruiting services? Why am I in this mess?

A large number of very good athletes are dealing with the fact that they are not going to college for their sport. Or they soon will be at some point.

I look at college sports and recruiting as a business and I know if you don’t get a scholarship then college can be very expense.  If you don’t take the business approach to the recruiting process then you’re not going to college! That’s how I see it!