Thoughts About Professional Football

I am currently finishing Gregg Easterbrook’s The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America. It is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read about football, and as someone who’s been a lifelong football fan, it was an eye-opener to put it mildly.

The author’s basic premise is that contact football grievously injures tens of thousands of young people every year from elementary school up to and including the pros. However, while concussions are a major focus concerning the NFL today, Easterbrook makes a much more salient point: the vast majority of concussions happen well before a player ever reaches the NFL (if that happens, which is unlikely), and indeed we need to focus on high school and college football if we are to address the epidemic of concussions.

What does this have to do with my college consulting? Many of my clients are scholar athletes, which is a good thing. However, occasionally I will have a client that is so addicted to a sport – including football – that they have dreams of making it to the pros one day. However, as Easterbrook notes in the book, the chances of winning the lottery are probably about equal to ever becoming a starter in the NFL. Indeed, most people will end their athletic career in their last year in college. Given that, Easterbrook makes a powerful indictment of parents who coerce or encourage their children to become virtual full-time athletes, instead of being scholars first, athletes second.

I recommend Easterbrook’s book immensely because it has much to say about our sports-saturated culture and also the very sorry epidemic of parents who misguidedly believe that sports is a ticket to a happier and wealthier life for their kids. It isn’t for the vast majority of students entering college.