As the offseason is officially underway for the Washington Redskins, and the draft predictions are beginning in full earnest, I figured now would be a good time to share my thoughts on the NFL draft. First of all, I understand the the NFL is a big business. If athletes have the skills and talents necessary to play at the professional level and NFL teams need their particular sets of skills and talents, why shouldn’t an athlete participate? It is, after all, what many athletes have been striving towards their entire lives. And for many of them, they have had to overcome great difficulties and hardships and sports has provided a way to do that. We should celebrate that they found a positive way in which to participate in the world and be productive. (Trust me, I think the salaries are out of control, but again…that’s for another post.)
However, it seems that in order to achieve the goal of playing sports at a professional level, athletes are forced to pick enormous salaries and the promise of stardom, etc. over completing their college education. Because the NFL draft rules are set up the way they are, many college athletes choose to leave college in the middle of their junior year (they have to declare their eligibility by Jan 15), in order to participate in the NFL Combine (showing their skills to scouts from the various professional teams) and many of the other things that come along with being a prospective NFL player. But for those that are not drafted (not many, let’s be honest) or for those that get seriously injured during the first year or two that they are in the NFL, what do they do when they aren’t playing football anymore? Why do we force someone to choose one or the other? Why can’t it be that they have the opportunity to finish their college degree and play football? Why can’t they finish the degree first and then play? As a teacher, it just seems so obvious that an education would provide so many opportunities for beyond the years of playing football or for those that aren’t able to play for very long. Again, just my two cents. 
An NFL career requires good health and timing your supply of talent with the NFL’s demand. A final year of college does not. With a league minimum of $375K, even the poorest of players makes in one year, what a teacher makes in about eight years. If you are projected to be drafted in the within the first 3 or 4 rounds, it should be a no brainer. You can always set aside a portion of your salary to return to school later. It is not a choice of one or the other. However, I’ll concede that most don’t go back. But those guys were probably not there to read Voltaire anyway.
My thoughts are a bit different. What bothers me here is not so much that they do not finish university, but that universities are part of this system.
While I have no interest in football, I have nothing against it. None the less, I’ve often been a bit appalled by the extent to which football is a big deal on the college campus. It’s gone from being a sport that was actually played by students, say up through the 1940s, to one in which many who are playing it at the university level have been brought in to these institutions of higher living basically to do nothing else. Some are very intelligent men, but frankly, some are not, and still they are kept in the schools while they essentially major in football. This, in turn, warps academic focus, and the entire big money thing gets tied up in it.
I wish football had a farm club system like baseball does, and that the universities weren’t the de facto clubs. It just isn’t good for anyone. Indeed, I wonder if more football players would get serious educations if such a system existed, as they’d not go to college, I suspect, until their football days were over, rather than in order to try to get into professional football. At that point in their education, the handwriting would be on the wall, and they’d have to make serious education choices.
You bring up some good points about having a club or farm system similar to MLB. I have often wondered about creating a system like that which would, as you say, lead to making the education decisions later, when they actually had to figure out what they wanted to do after football. There would be more focus on the rest of their life instead of just the first 5-10 years (more if they are lucky) after. Seems I’ve opened a can of worms.