Think Your Kid Will Play Sports for a Living?

[dennyjones]

What Are Your Odds of Making the Pros?

 

What good young athlete doesn't dream of playing pro sports? The allure is intoxicating, especially for the talented, and it can warp judgment.

In fact, high school players who reach the pros are almost as rare as lottery winners, so virtually every student-athlete should have a backup: an education. That's a key message of the movie Coach Carter, yet it's easy to ignore in a society that focuses more on immediate gains than enduring ones.

So what are the probabilities of a pro career? Below are some numbers, from the NCAA. They show the chance of getting drafted by a major league team, not of playing, so the true odds are even lower:

Men's Basketball

-- High school senior players who go on to play NCAA men`s basketball: Less than one in 35, or 2.9 percent.

-- NCAA senior players drafted by an NBA team: Less than one in 75, or 1.3 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by an NBA team: About three in 10,000, or 0.03 percent. That's roughly the chance of getting four of a kind in the first round of draw poker.

Women`s Basketball

-- High school senior players who go on to play NCAA women's basketball: About three in 100, or 3.1 percent.

-- NCAA senior players drafted by a WNBA team: About one in 100, or 1.0 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by a WNBA team: About one in 5,000, or 0.02 percent.

That's the chance that a killer asteroid will destroy civilization in the next century, according to Princeton astronomers.

Football

--High school senior players who go on to play NCAA men's football: About one in 17, or 5.8 percent.

-- NCAA senior players drafted by an NFL team: About one in 50, or 2.0 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by an NFL team: About nine in 10,000, or 0.09 percent.

That's about the chance you have an IQ above 150, as measured by the Stanford-Binet test. The average IQ of Ph.D. students is 130.

Baseball

--High school senior players who go on to play NCAA men`s baseball: Less than three in 50, or 5.6 percent

-- NCAA senior players drafted by a Major League Baseball (MLB) team: Less than eleven in 100, or 10.5 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by an MLB team: About one in 200, or 0.5 percent. Drafted baseball players almost always go to a minor league team. These teams abound; there are over 150 of them, compared to 30 in the majors. The big leagues have 750 players, yet the 2004 draft alone took 1,500. Hence some estimate that only one in 33 minor leaguers ever makes it to the pros. If that's correct, the chance of a high school player making the big leagues is one in 6,600, or 0.015 percent. That's roughly the chance of a thief guessing your PIN number on the first try.

Men's Ice Hockey

-- High school senior players who go on to play NCAA men's ice hockey: Less than thirteen in 100, or about 12.9 percent.

-- NCAA senior players drafted by an NHL team: Less than 1 in 24, or 4.1 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by an NHL team: About one in 250, or 0.4 percent. That's the chance of flipping heads eight times in a row.

Men's Soccer

-- High school senior players who go on to play NCAA men's soccer: Less than three in 50, or 5.7 percent.

-- NCAA senior players drafted by a Major League Soccer (MLS) team: Less than one in 50, or 1.9 percent.

-- High school senior players eventually drafted by an MLS team: About one in 1,250, or 0.08 percent. That's about the chance that tomorrow will be February 29.

 

reprinted from: http://www.charactercenter.com/Insight/InsightMarch2.htm

sources: www.ncaa.org/research/, www.dailynebraskan.com, and the Josephson Institute's PVWH Sportsmanship Newsleter, Feb. 05

 

 

A study by the NCAA concluded:

“Sadly though, it comes as a rude surprise to many athletes yearning for a professional sports career to learn that the odds against success are astronomically high. Approximately 1 percent of NCAA men’s basketball players and 2 percent of NCAA football players are drafted by NBA or NFL teams – and just being drafted is no assurance of a successful professional career. “Student-athletes” whose sole and now failed objective was to make the pros suddenly find themselves in a world that demands skills their universities did not require them to learn.”

 

reprinted from www.ncaa.org

 

 

[CarlSpackler]

My hope is that my children do something that provides actual value to society.

[billchao]

[dennyjones]

30 minutes ago, billchao said:

One of my golf partners uses that line frequently.