After the showcase each year we spend a lot of time surveying the participants and coaches. One of the areas we look at is why do you want to play football in college. After looking at the responses for 5 years I came up with the 3 G's of playing sports in college. They just happen to correlate with the same 3 G's of why the Spanish Conquistadors came to the new world.
Why do kids want to play sports in college?
Gold: Plenty of participants believe that the only way they are going to be able to afford to go to college is to play football. Their only real life experience with how to go to college seems to be the athletics route. These kids usually recognize that they need to get out of their situation and the best way to do that is by going to college. These kids usually end up staying at their school longer then the other categories. If kids do not end up playing football in college a lot of them are joining the military.
Leroy was one of those kids during the 1st Showcase. He was my student worker 1 class period so I really got to know him well. He was a slow, 5'6" 210lb DE. He is also in my top 10 favorite students of all time. His grades were good and he was going to be a full pell grant kid. When he did not get an offer from the showcase he was devastated. I asked him why he wanted to play he flat out said it was his only way out of his situation. I looked at him and said, " you have good grades I can get you into a college, and you can get your education and get most of it paid for".
The whole concept of him having the ability to go to college without playing football was absolutely foreign to him. He honestly believed it was his only way out. The only "college people" he had any first hand experience with were "athletes". To say that this revelation made me reevaluate some of my beliefs would be an understatement. Leroy did fine. He went to Lamar on academic and pell grant money, lived on campus, and is now a teacher.
God: These participants believe that without football they will not be able to be successful in life. They self select themselves as football players and do not know how to adjust to life without football. These kids have usually been playing football since they were 7 years old, and football has been a staple in their lives for the past 10 years.
When these participants do not have football in their lives they don't know what else to do with themselves. They have lost the majority of their time structure within their daily life without football. Then 6 months later when we ship them off to SFA or Texas Tech to go be a college student they loose their parents "structure" and fail out of school the first semester.
So let me get this straight... We remove the 2 forms of structure in an 18 year olds life, football and parents, then we send them to a new environment (college campus), then we are surprised that they spend all of their time partying and chasing girls, and we wonder why they fail out of school?
If they still have the structure of football in college they have other adults (coaches) looking in on them. They have to wake up and be somewhere at a certain time, they have to be at class, they are held accountable by someone else. So when they are off at a small college in Iowa they have that constant of football to provide that structure that most 18 year olds need to be successful.
Yes I realize that plenty of 18 year olds go off to college and are self disciplined enough to be successful. Should most 18 year olds be able to make that transition...yes. Do a lot of them suffer in college due to bad time management...absolutely.
Glory: These participants are used to being the Big Man on Campus. They believe they are the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be. The only thing they know about "College Football" is that they want 50k people cheering for them at Kyle Field. They have never heard of Texas Lutheran University let alone Dordt College. They are used to getting things their way, and can not imagine why they are not going to a D1 school.
Most of the time their grades are horrible. What prevents them from going off to college besides ego is that they do not fill out the paperwork. Their friend just signed his name and he is going to Texas Tech to play football. What do you mean I have to apply/admission essays/ turn in paper work to get into college.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids fall into this category. They are not aware of the opportunities at smaller colleges and they usually suffer for that.
Thanks For Reading
Cobyrhoden@gmail.com
@srfbshowcase
No comments:
Post a Comment