Quote: (07-19-2011 12:57 PM)blurb Wrote:
Quote: (07-19-2011 08:16 AM)UrbanNerd Wrote:
Oh, I should add that the fallout from the popular football/basketball players not getting drafted also helped with more chicks. It was hilarious hearing about all the breakups and those same chicks were hanging out with various graduating seniors.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't only a few handful of college sportsman actually make it in the big leagues and become pros?
People don't understand just how difficult it is to become a pro athlete. The chances are not merely one in a hundred(one percent)-they are WELL UNDER .01%. It is shocking when you really look at the facts and numbers.
Take the NFL as an example (American football is my game, so I can speak most accurately to it).
1.
The odds even before the pros are tough.
There are just under 1000 football playing colleges in the US (including JUCOs and NAIA). Each team has, on average, 110-130 players, not including the walkons and try-outs who hang on sometimes as scout team guys. These guys are drawn from over 20,000 high school teams across the country, each team filled with guys competing to play collegiate ball.
Most of those players are trying to get into Division 1, where 90% of the pros come from. Out of 250,000 high school football seniors in any given year,
only about 4000 get scholarships. If you as a player can manage to get to the D1 FBS level (the Alabamas, Floridas and TCUs of the world), you've practically gone pro to some extent already-very few high school players can aspire to that.
2.
Making a living playing pro-football
Now let's look at the next level. Only 250 guys make it into the league every year through the draft, and another 20 or so may squeeze their way into the NFL as undrafted rookies. A couple dozen more guys will find a home in Canada and make a living playing football there for a few years (a top CFL QB can make up to $500,000-a rookie can start at around $70,000. Good starters at other positions can maybe hit $200k including bonuses. The average is $90k). Many of the guys who run north will not make it either-competition for those spots is fierce.
That's all. Everyone else either goes semi-pro(AFL and other indoor leagues mainly) or gets a job (or both). Even the guys up in the CFL don't usually make enough to finance the type of lifestyle many women expect from a pro-athlete.
3.
Putting the numbers in perspective-high school recruit rankings
Take a look at these lists:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiti...kings/2004
Those are listings of the top high school football prospects in the nation at each position. These are from 2004, you can check them for many other years as well.
Going through them and googling some of the names is truly revealing, and shows just how difficult it really is to get to the NFL. In 2004, out of the top 30 "pro style" QBs in the nation, only eight actually "went pro" eventually (read: made NFL rosters at some point and thus actual NFL salaries for a season). This isn't counting the hundreds of other pro-style QBs Rivals lists online every year who are all, in their own right, VERY good high school players, dominant in their respective regions.
The rest? They were all clearly very good, and all went to the best college teams in the country, but they simply didn't cut it at a higher level. They were dominant in high school and I'm sure many people were CERTAIN they'd go pro, but it never happened. That's the norm.
Now, let's say a guy overcomes these odds and manages to make it onto an NFL roster and even into a game. Our story isn't over-he hasn't necessarily made it yet.
4. You made it to the NFL...but for how long?
Very few NFL players last for more than two or three seasons. A typical story usually goes like this: guy makes roster as a rookie, plays for two years making the league minimum or something slightly higher, and is out of the league by year three. Even more common are guys whose entire NFL career consists of 8-10 weeks on a practice squad or a year on the injured reserve.
NFL careers are short, MUCH shorter than people realize. The commonly cited number is 2-3 seasons, but that only includes the drafted guys. If you count the undrafted guys (4-500 of them try out every year and only a couple dozen will make rosters out of training camp), your average gets even lower.
Just getting to training camp is a MASSIVE accomplishment for any player.
Lets say our guy gets through all of this camp craziness and makes the team. League minimum is around $340,000(as of 2011).
If he lasts for a couple of seasons, he'll have made good money for sure (his pay will increase each year). But it won't be nearly enough to live on for life (even before accounting for living expenses, incidentals and taxes)-he'll eventually need to get a job just like everyone else once he's out of the league.
5. Longer term wealth-what are the chances?
But wait-we still aren't done. What happens if our guy
does make it in the league for a longer while?
You have to assume he doesn't blow through all of his money.
Most NFL and NBA players do exactly that.
Not only is it unlikely that a player who makes it into the NFL will last long enough to make good money to live on, but even if he does, there is about an 80% chance that he blow it.
Typical story runs like this: Undrafted rookie signs NFL contract to go to camp. He uses his $25,000 signing bonus to buy an Escalade(no, seriously) and a nice little pad.
Then he gets cut. No more money- broke like everyone else.
Or we could have a young rookie who got drafted in the earlier rounds and got a sizeable signing bonus(quarter-mil maybe). He gets into the league and his expenses skyrocket-he's bought the escalade and a nice house, he's flying across the country for parties and he's paying his baby mamas and jump-offs all types of cash to keep them in line.
He gets cut 3-5 years down the line. No more money-can't pay the lease on the Escalade or the $500,000 home. Bankrupt.
Even long time veterans and former all-pros aren't safe. There is a reason you see so many of those guys on TV later on in life(deion sanders, Emmitt Smith, Marshall Faulk, etc). They may have made tens of millions, but in most cases they've spent it all or racked up tremendously high monthly costs of living(5 baby mamas, huge mansion, etc) that require them to keep working indefinitely.
I haven't even gotten into the healthcare expenses and other compromises pro-players have to make once they're done, things that further erode their ability to "ball" and provide the living these women expect.
You won't see Barry Sanders pulling any of this-he probably banked/invested his cash. Some players do that and truly remain rich foreever. They're a very small minority.
6.
Conclusion: Why these women are truly stupid
Let's bring this all back around to the jock-chasing women again who we were laughing at, and illustrate again why this is so funny given all we've discussed here:
A. Her chances of spotting a future pro are very low. Even sure-fire high school guys(top100 players at their positions) have an 80-90% failure rate. In college, many of the
most dominant players never
last in the
pros.
You'd be surprised at
how many notable NCAA records are held by guys you don't even know.
B. Even if she spots a guy who goes pro, he probably won't last long enough to make the kind of money and finance the type of lifestyle she's expecting.
C. Even if she gets a guy who lasts and snags that multi-million dollar contract, he'll probably spend it all and go broke anyway.
Bottomline: Groupies are idiots. If you're a woman and you want a man with money, you'd be wise to start hunting down future white collar professionals(finance, law, etc) instead. They're more numerous, easier to spot(find the high GPAs at good undergrads and grad schools), and have greater and longer lasting earning potential in the aggregate.
Most women don't figure this out until its a little too late. Too bad.
