The value of an education

Signing day... My day started off great with the announcement that Sean Parker, one of the nation's top safeties, and more importantly a top recruit of the University of Southern California, would forgo his offer from USC and instead spend the next four years of his playing career at UW. Not only is this huge as it rounds out UW's recruiting class with a great defensive player, but it further goes to show that the City of Seattle has collectively decided to screw USC in the backside (pardon my French). That now makes it USC's top three coaches (Carroll, Sark, Holt), pretty much their entire conditioning staff, and NOW there recruits?! What a turnaround a year can make.

Because UW was on the national media's radar today, I tuned in intently to ESPN and the most interesting thing I heard honestly had little to do with football or sports. Today on SportsNation, Marcus Wiley, a huge well-spoken black dude and former NFL player who is often a regular on ESPN, commented on players' like Parker's choice to attend a school for the value of its education over the prominence of it's athletic program. Wiley, was fielding a heckling fan's wise-crack email about him choosing to attend Columbia to play football. His response was that he could have gone to a big program like an Alabama or a Florida, but he choose to go to the place where he would get the best education. His point was that today's players will get covered no matter where they go if they are good. We live in the age of YouTube and multiple scouting sites that cover every area of the globe, so why sacrifice your education to be the third running back in USC stable or Florida's 4th option at your position. Today's society encourages our young people to sacrifice their education at the expense of money and fame and as a result you see young people with money making stupid decisions that could have been avoided.

Now USC is actually a great school, but the same cannot be said for many of the other school's who dominate the football landscape that recruits often see as better opportunities for them. It makes me value my education and appreciate the few athlete's who choose to enhance more than just their draft stock when they pick a university. It also bodes well for UW's turnaround as it has both history rich in football and academics; sorry WSU you just suck at both. Good day to you all.