m e9 By: LaVaron Lumpkin
For the life of me I have yet to figure out why we, as a race, and as parents, continue to fall for the age old myth that professional sport, especially football and basketball, is our way to a better life. Can anyone answer that question for me? Only 1 of every 17 high school football players will go on to play college football, at any level. Only 1 of every 50 college football players will get drafted into the NFL.
Consequently, 8 of every 10,000 high school football players will go pro. The numbers for basketball doesn’t fair any better. Actually the odds are worst when you consider the NBA draft is 60 players. Trying to make it to the NBA, the odds are 40 in 10,000,000. Even with these odds, every black boy that is born with a little bit of size is automatically thought to be a future football or basketball player. Just reading those numbers should make us scratch our heads and wonder why.
I know this is not popular to say, but when we have daughters, we preach and teach education, and we are relentless in preparing them to survive in this mean and cold world. We make sure they do their homework, we make sure they are involved in educational extra curricular activities, and give them every academic advantage that we can afford. I guess that is because their means of achieving success is with their brain power. We will do the same with our boys too, well, if they are uncoordinated and/or don’t have an athletic bone in their body. We know since they don’t have a career in sports, then they HAVE to make it with their brains. These kids may be involved in sports, but only for recreational purposes.
The athletes, on the other hand, are taught to make sports their god, and education, at best is something to fall back on. The major problem is, because, the parents have crippled these boys to be failures in life. If you believe these high school and college coaches that tell you how great your sons are, really love them, you are in bad shape. They see these boys as a paycheck. In case you haven’t connected the dots, high school and college sports is the equivalent of Modern Day Slavery. These schools make millions of dollars off the bodies and abilities of your boys, basically for almost free. When they are no longer useful to the coaches or the schools, they are sent back to you broke, busted, and disgusted. They end up living in your basement, with no skills, no job, and NO DEGREE. So ask yourself, is the failure theirs, or ours as parents?
I am not saying don’t let your sons play sports. I feel there are very important “life lessons” that are taught and learned when playing sports. However, I am asking you to change your way of thinking when you approach sports. Instead, how about making your sons’ education the top priority and let sports be something to fall back on?
The same intensity that we put into our daughters education, we need to put that same intensity into our sons. Why? I’m glad you asked. We have more black men in prison than in college. We have more black women raising their kids alone because the men are not equipped with the skills to provide unless they make the fast money. When that doesn’t work out, they are in trouble.
I asked the parents earlier in the article, whose failure is it…our sons, or ours as parents? The answer is easy; it’s the parent’s failure. Our sons are only doing what they have been conditioned to do their whole lives. Go for broke when it comes to sports with no lifeline. The good news is there is no better time to make a change in the way our sons are raised than today. Raise them to be educated men instead of pro athletes and our next generation will reap the benefits. Until next time…
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