How the NCAA Could Prepare Pro Athletes Before They Even See an NFL Field

As we watch the NFL draft process every year, it’s hard not to get caught up in the measurables, the pro days and the stories about players beating the odds to make "The Show".

What we forget about, what easily gets lost in the shuffle and forgotten, is that while the combine and draft process are "the biggest job interviews of a prospect’s life," there is very little long term preparation for it.

Oh, sure, they get help in the form of personal trainers and training facilities like Athletes Performance and TEST Football Academy; however, that’s on their dime and has nothing to do with the NCAA and colleges.

The NCAA? You know, the guys allegedly watching out for these young men as they move their way through college and in some cases, towards the pros?

They don’t do anything.

Well, let me back up. The NCAA does a lot. They try to keep the rule breaking and mayhem under control, help manage scholarship rules and to some extent help schedule and manage the overall football season.

They just don’t do anything to prepare those who have the talent to flourish and survive in the NFL much less beyond.

More importantly, I think they have a responsibility to do something to change that.

Now, I know that the NCAA represents far more than football players and that it represents more athletes who will never go professional than those who will.

However—and this is true for baseball and hockey players as well as men and women who play basketball—it would take very little effort to set up a system or program to help all potential professional athletes have the knowledge to succeed in their chose profession.

You might say, well, isn’t that the role of the college? Aren’t they supposed to be preparing these athletes for life after football?

Well, they aren’t—or at least few of them are. Sure, they do their best to get a player physically ready but that’s largely because they need them to be able to play on Saturday and if that helps get a player in the NFL, so much the better as it draws more recruits to their schools.

They aren’t preparing these players for life, though. Not close. Unless a player is a business major, they don’t get any instruction in financial planning. Unless the coach happened to have a history in the NFL or a pro alumni comes to visit, they’re not hearing what they need to in order to prepare for the physical and emotional trauma of an NFL season.

Schools are worried about next Saturday, next game, next Bowl birth, not what happens when these players leave school.

There are plenty of things the NCAA makes happen that schools would just ignore. Preparing those football players who have a chance to play at the pro level is definitely one of those things.

Look at how many players end up with no money at the end of their all too brief careers. Think back to being a 21 or 22-year-old. How careful were you with your savings? How often did you indulge when maybe you shouldn’t have? Now picture several hundred thousand dollars to play with.

I don't know about you but I doubt I'd be much better off than many of the players we read about in the papers if nobody taught me how to manage more money than I'd ever seen before.

If the job of a school is to educate and prepare young adults for their chosen profession, why do schools not bother to do this for their athletes?

And why does the NCAA allow them to be lax?

Now, you could argue that, as an institute whose mission statement says it exists "To improve, promote and protect college football for those who play, coach, support and dream of playing the game" that they don’t have to do anything.

That just managing the football season is enough.

There’s a ton to manage—according to this article, the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as DIV-1A) alone is made up of 120 teams. The NCAA has all of 38 investigators. I’m no math wizard but that seems a bit disproportionate.

So how can I advocate the NCAA do more when they already look overtaxed? What would that even look like?

The answer to the first question is, because the NCAA and schools claim to be helping players and guiding them to their careers, yet do very little of that.

For the second question, it could look several ways.

From a university standpoint, it would mean requiring schools to provide classes in money management, business planning—things that might help an athlete plan for a life beyond sports, but something so few seem to.

There are sports management courses, but these classes would be much more practical and aimed towards giving athletes the tools they need to make sure that they can handle their success.

Yet they could be covered by the same staff and professors that were already teaching courses in the same vein as these new ones.

Some encouragement by the NCAA to make this happen is likely the only way it will happen.

Even if the idea of university sponsored classes doesn't happen, the NCAA itself should put together some seminars covering similar topics.

Again, these classes could benefit more than just football players, as any athlete who might have a chance to play professionally would benefit from help in planning for the future.

Since the NCAA refuses to allow athletes to work, setting up summer internships within the NFL—be it with teams, the league offices or the NFLPA—would not cut into school time and give the players a much needed introduction to what goes into an NFL career.

The internships would be short, given training camps and the beginning of summer practices for college programs, but even a brief time would be enough to give players some insight into what they are getting into and introduce them to players who they might be able to call upon for advice down the road.

Overall, this would assist the NCAA with its mandate to improve the lives of student-athletes and again, help young adults who have often made their schools and the NCAA plenty of money to have the skills to help them navigate the life of a professional athlete.

The NCAA and schools do very little of this and until the Rookie Symposium held by the NFL, players get very little in the way of real world.

A lot of money is made for the establishment by these players, and while a scholarship is plenty for some, there are others for whom more is required and should be given.

Making sure players are educated, not just in the normal subjects but in areas which will help them to manage their careers successfully needs to be a part of the NCAA's mandate.

It isn't now, but it has to be in the future.