March Madness is like Fishing

WARNING: You will be reading my opinion. I make unfounded accusations about college academic and sports programs as an example and purposely do not provide concrete evidence ... mainly because colleges are pretty good about covering their tracks; but mostly because I prefer inferred and deduced logic rather than a "smoking gun." Enjoy!

Shhh, I'm trying to pay attention to the salmon running upstream to spawn. See, Salmon are born in rivers and make there way to the sea. After a few years at sea, they may travel hundreds of miles up streams and rapids to return to nearly the exact spot they were born so they may reproduce, and, eventually die. This cycle happens every year and is as dependable as March Madness and tax deadlines.

Think of it: 20 or more generations of salmon, with the 20th tracing its blood line back to the 1st generation, spawning in the nearly the same exact spot. Now think of this: a couple generations of good basketball players going back to their alma maters to lend a hand in recruiting the next generation of basketball players, that may or may not suck. Each March, ESPN and non-cable television stations feel the need to completely up-end their regular schedules to play College basketball games tiered to produce the two "best" teams that eventually play each other in a much bally-hoo'd and televised game.

If you ever have listened to a pro-sports athlete talk, you may notice they try to talk in sound bytes. That is to say, they give concise (but not always logical) answers that would fit nicely in a highlight piece during the news' sports segment. Below are a few examples of sound byte answers gone horribly wrong.

"I've had to overcome a lot of diversity."
-- Cavaliers forward Drew Gooden on the ups and downs of his NBA career

"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
-Jason Kidd

"I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."
-Shaquille O'Neal on whether he had visited the Parthenon during his visit to Greece

"Play some Picasso."
-Former New Jersey Net Chris Morris, to a piano player at a hotel bar while trying to impress a date.

So now we have a few examples of pro-athletes sounding really stupid or un-educated. These athletes have the important mantle of being "hero's" or inspiring younger people. We have generations of young people seeing that is ok not to be smart or educated and, rather than developing mental aptitude, developing physical skills that will eventually fade. Worse still, they see it is ok to be dumb in a broader sense. I may not be the smartest person on the planet, but I'd be willing to bet, 10+ years out of college, that I could still apply the quadratic equation or write a grammatically correct sentence while Shaq can run, dribble, converse and shoot all without skipping a beat. 

Trouble is, Shaq and other stars like Derek Rose or Michael Jordan or any professional basketball player are but a small handful of players who were successful out of college. Not every college basketball player makes it to the NBA just like not every salmon egg makes it to be a fish. So we have a relatively large pool of college basketball players who potentially are sacrificing their education in basket weaving (whilst getting "academic" help along the way *wink wink nudge nudge*) to have a shot at being pro. 

Thankfully, most college players give up the sport because they know they suck when compared to Rose or Kobe. Regretfully, the college players who survive the transition from college to pro usually forget they are educated because they see their pro hero's flashing their money around or being otherwise dumb.You see the same shit with rap or hip-hop stars. As time flows onward, kids in poor areas see "making it big" as their only way out of the streets when they should be looking at education as the smart route.

So this March Madness, don't see the basketball game, see the salmon spawning with only a 10% survival rate and another generation of student athletes with failed dreams and broken hopes, destined for mediocrity.