Athletes and Students

          In Vermont, the highest paid public employee is the hockey coach.  In 26 other states, the highest paid is the football coach.  In baseball, two major league teams have four players pulling in over $20 million each for 2014; the Los Angeles Dodgers alone have a payroll of $235,295,000; Alex Rodriguez in his last full season (2012) made $32 million, an average of $253,968 per hit.  By comparison, Kobe Bryant in that year earned $28 million or $37,940 per basket, and Payton Manning at $20 million cashed in $600,000 per touchdown.

          To state the obvious, there is a lot of money to be made in sports.  But the mega bucks go only to the top tier.  For every college coach making a million dollars, there are a hundred who toil for peanuts.  For every baseball millionaire there are hundreds hoping to make it out of the minor leagues while riding buses and living on meager meal allowances.  There are legions of kids honing their skills on playground basketball courts who will never achieve their dream of being among NBA players who average $5.15 million a year.

          There is nothing wrong with dreaming of making it big.  Sports is one way, but I would argue that chances of reaching millionaire status are not much better than the odds of winning a state lottery.  In fact, sports stars account for only a tiny portion of the famous 1% at the top of the earnings heap. 

          The value of sports, for me, lies in ways not measured by dollar signs.  As a young man I played them all: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, even tennis.  Because I was short, slow, and not very strong, I discovered early on that I had no future as an athlete.   But that didn’t prevent me from learning the value of competition, teamwork, and sportsmanship.  And because I seldom found myself on the winning side, I also learned to appreciate the value of success and the opportunity to achieve it. 

          In many ways the sports arena is like the classroom.  Like in sports, not everyone can rise to the top of the class; few earn PHDs.  But unlike sports, where the pyramid is very narrow at the top, the classroom can provide every student the knowledge and skills that will open up opportunities in any number of fields.  Every kid with a proper education can become good at something and enjoy a measure of success in life. 

          Sadly, we have to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, too many young people these days spurn education.  Having disdained the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and skills, they leave school with no hope for the future, no aspirations for success, and no chance of ever becoming a productive member of society.  In this Land of Opportunity, there is no greater tragedy.