Sports careers can’t be at the expense of education
Words: Naomi M, Toronto
Education is such a valuable asset in all aspects of life, including in the world of sports. Often kids have a preconceived misconception that athletes do not need a solid education. But sports alone do not often make you enough money to be financially stable on its own unless you’re the best of the best. Because many people retire in sports from such young ages, it is important to be able to have an education to pursue a different pathway once you retire, so you still have a grounding purpose to contribute to society.
John Urschel is a phenomenal example of balancing his love of sports with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). His career started with a full scholarship to play football at Penn State University where he majored in math and later got his Bachelor in 2012 and his masters in 2013. While at Penn he even developed the Urschel-Zikatanov theorem.
After getting drafted by the US National Football League (NFL) on the Baltimore Ravens offensive line, he was temporarily out of school. While playing in the NFL from 2014 to 2016 after “feeling like something was missing” he enrolled as a doctoral student in Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During offseasons he would pursue his Ph.D. and even during the season he still managed to publish several research papers including his most recognized paper A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians. He retired at age 26 to focus on his long-term career as a mathematics professor at MIT. He is such a role model for athletes, but his firm education even while being an athlete had such a huge impact on his future.
To sum up his experience Urschel says, “So often, people want to divide the world into two: matter and energy. Wave and particle. Athlete and mathematician. Why can’t something (or someone) be both?”
The fact is that sports is not usually a long-term career. Yes, a percentage may continue coaching after retirement, starting businesses to help other athletes or working alongside sponsors, but this is only a small percentage of professional athletes. Even so, a strong education sure comes in handy when starting a business, and especially when going into STEM.
Class of 2019 Harvard athlete Gabby Thomas became a 2024 Olympic champion. But balancing her education was crucial as she pursued her passion in healthcare. Gabby’s track career started in high school at The Williston Northampton School in Massachusetts. Gabby was admitted to Harvard University for her undergrad where she not only majored in neurobiology with a minor in global health, but also graduated in 2019 becoming the first female sprinter in an Ivy League to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association indoor national championship. She even got endorsed by New Balance in 2018.
After undergrad, Thomas moved to Texas and joined the Buford-Bailey Track Club to increase her skills to Olympic level while pursuing a master degree in epidemiology at the University of Texas. She says, “I didn’t really think about going to the track as a sacrifice, but as an opportunity. Nobody was making me study neurobiology, nobody was making me run, [...] but it was a choice I was making because I loved it.”
Education is crucial because you never know if an injury is going to prevent you from pursuing your dream sport. Even if you are the number 1 athlete in the world or a 2026 top-5 NBA Most Valuable Player, education is key.
Earlier this year, the Detroit Pistons’ top-tier guard and best player Cade Cunningham had a lung collapse from pneumothorax, following an intense basketball game. He missed 11 games but did recover and came back into the game. If he had no longer been able to play basketball at the young age of 24, a second career pathway would be vital to keep generating income and to have something fulfilling to do next.
Sacrificing sports for education is a very unwise gamble. As you read above, there are many ways to balance both. Education does not have to mean excelling in a particular academic field, but having a strong platform for your life ahead. Under 2% of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes go pro, so putting all your eggs in one basket can be dangerous to your future.
Take former professional boxer Mike Tyson. He made over $400 million, but had limited academic and financial education having dropped out of high school: he declared bankruptcy in 2003.
NFL statistics show roughly 78% of former NFL players experience financial stress due in part to no education on financial spending. By sacrificing your education, once your final match is finished, your future can be limited and job opportunities can be difficult to find.
It is very important for young athletes to understand the value of education, to ensure that they are financially literate and to have a solid plan in case of a severe injury.
Naomi is a Toronto-based participant in Youth Media Forward: meet the Toronto participants here