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Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
According to this site, it's about 20%. Any one want to guess which of the major professional sports has the lowest percent of college graduates?
According to that article, y'all are right, it's baseball. Seems reasonable given baseball's drafting system. I don't pay much attention to baseball but I'm not sure I've heard anyone bemoan the lack of education in baseball the way I have basketball.
Also according to the article, NFL is about 50%.
A lot of pro athletes went to college but didn't necessarily get any meaningful education.
Ohh, I see where you're going there(Chapel Hell?) and I see why baseball would be the pro sport that has the least players with college degrees. Baseball allows players to go pro right out of high school. The NBA doesn't allow that. I think the NFL does but most high school seniors don't have the body or strength for that.
GoDuke!
For the NFL:
From the Houston Chronicle: "While there is no minimum age for professional football players, the NFL mandates that you must be out of high school for at least three years before you are eligible to play. If you graduate at 17 years old, that means you must wait until you are 20 to enter the NFL draft."
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Players must be out of high school for at least 3 years to be eligible for the NFL draft.
Baseball is odd. A player can be drafted and go pro out of high school. But players who commit to a NCAA program must stay there until after their junior season (or whenever they turn 21). I believe players drafted out of high school can elect to go NCAA instead of signing with the team that drafted them. If they go to NCAA, the drafting team loses the rights to that player, and the same eligibility rules apply. I think there's very little incentive for players who do go to NCAA to actually complete all four years unless they aren't good enough to get drafted, in which case, they'll probably never be in MLB.
I bet NHL is actually number one, but the NHL is unique in that only about 1/4 of the players are American. Only 32% of NHL players played NCAA hockey at all. And only 34% of those players played all four seasons. For hockey, college players can sign a professional contract after each season, and a team that drafts a player committed to an NCAA program retains his rights until the August after his fourth year. So like baseball, there's little incentive to stay all four years if a player is good enough to turn pro at any point during his college career (they can become a UFA if they complete four years and do not sign a professional contract with the team that drafted them, so that is one incentive).
On top of that, baseball is also comprised of a MUCH larger foreign population than basketball or football (not so much true for hockey, where the proportion foreign is probably higher than baseball). Lots of kids from the Dominican and Central/South America are signed as 16 year olds. Between that and the draft structure it's easy to see why baseball has the lowest percentage of players with college degrees.
I'd guess that hockey (which wasn't included in that article) probably has a comparably low college graduation percentage as baseball.
Interestingly enough, of the best pro sports league in every sport (ie NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, etc), the NBA is the second most "international" after the Premier League for soccer (https://www.economist.com/internatio...asingly-fierce). "International" is defined by nationalities represented rather than number of players who aren't American. If we go by the second definition, I'd assume MLB is likely the second most international after the Premier League (or any soccer league).
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club