The Growing Issues of Off-Field Problems in College Sports — What Will Make Them Stop? #RESM560V

Most people only dream of playing the sport they love past their high school years — the numbers definitely don’t lie. Of the several thousand high school athletes playing today, only 3% of all high school basketball players, 6.1 % of high school baseball players, and 5.7% of high school football players get recruited to play collegiate sports. The number of athletes past that who get to the professional level are even less likely with basketball coming in at 1.2%, baseball being a little higher with 9.4%, and players going in to the NFL at a mere 1.8%.

The numbers easily show that a very small percentage of the population as a whole get to play a collegiate or professional sport. One might even say that these players are extremely privileged to be in the positions that they are in.

So why then are there so many instances where these rare and privileged few find themselves in so much trouble off the field? Yes, they are human just like you and me — yes, their faults get magnetized because of the limelight that they are in and yes, they get pressured from all angles because of their added fame and fortune.

Within the last couple years we have seen Heisman quarterbacks — also known as the “best” college football player — be plagued and criticized for just as much off the field antics as their on field performance at times.

From walking out of a grocery store with unpaid food, to making sexually vulgar comments towards women, to investigations of being illegally paid for signed merchandise, or to being arrested and jailed for fighting and giving authorities fake identification.

These antics are just a handful of the many that are addressed each and every week in collegiate and professional sports.

A couple questions to ask in regards to these troubled athletes are, “What will make them stop?” — and “What will hold these players more accountable to doing better off the field?”

One possible answer, from Matt Hayes — Senior writer for Sporting News, might be that we need to:

“Hit the players where it matters most: future earnings.”

“The NFL can make this very simple and succinct. Any college player interested in employment in the league must pass a background check, and if they have a history of arrests or off-field issues, they immediately are moved into a — here’s the key — significantly lower earning bracket for the first four years of their employment.”

Another answer to the questions might be in changing the way the whole system works after the collegiate level for certain sports like football and basketball.

In October, 2013, the Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said:

“Football and basketball might work better if they had minor leagues, so players who didn't want to attend college had somewhere else to go.”

This idea would give those who had issues off the field an opportunity to be a part of a program that could help them build up their character and skill set to be able to perform at the next level. This obviously would not stop the players from messing up from time to time, but it would potentially and hopefully slow down the occurrences of poor off-field behavior.

Matt Hayes of sportingnews.com asked a Power 5 football coach: “What would happen if players knew, from the moment they stepped on a college campus, that the NFL was monitoring their behavior and their ability to earn will dramatically decrease if they have problems in college?”

The coach answered:

“You’ll still have knuckleheads, but you’ll have a lot less”.

We can only hope that the powers that be in sports such as football, basketball, and baseball will implement these potential “fixes” and see to it that the rare and privileged few get their act together off the field. This would not only help the sports professionals — including the owners, managers, and coaches; but also help the players — not just on the field, but off the field as well.