With all of the hoopla surrounding the excitement of this year’s March Madness, I have listened to many basketball commentators, analysis, and former coaches voice their opinion on the issue of a young man’s decision to enter the NBA out of high school.
Most feel it is important for a high school graduate to attend a college to refine their basketball skills, knowledge and gain maturity in their personal development as a young adult.
These young men come from many diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds for which their decisions to pass on a scholarship to play basketball representing the school of their choice, while achieving an education from a school of higher learning is a personal decision.
The value of an education can never be given a price tag unless you are paying for the education. It is in my last statement that I believe when a student is recruited by a professional basketball organization to play for money, it would make sense to take the money and play basketball.
The student’s professional basketball contract is more than enough to pay for the student’s college education for which the student has the opportunity to return to college after their basketball career and complete their education at the college or university of their choice.
I believe the schools of higher learning would welcome the opportunity for a former pro athlete student to attend their schools of higher learning since the school would receive monies from the attendance of a mature adult and a paying student that isn’t using financial aid.
The irony is the school at some point offered the student a scholarship giving the student an opportunity to attend school without payment. However the monies generated by ticket sales when the student’s team played games would have been more than enough to pay for their education several times over.
Recently student athletes at Northwestern University asked the state of Illinois to allow the student athletes to form a student athlete union providing the student athletes the benefits similar to paid employees within the state of Illinois.
This is an incredible turn of events in the culture of student athletes around the US. If student athletes can organize a union, vote at the age of 18, enter the military, train to shoot a gun to take a life, I think in my opinion an 18 year old young adult should be able to leave high school and decide to play any professional sport.
These are my opinions and observations, for anyone to consider
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