Days of the multi-sport athlete fading
Long gone are the days of young kids playing three or four sports in a year, and it is also a lost art at the scholastic level.
However, it has long been a staple at the collegiate level that student-athletes focus year-round on their respective sports.
Most student-athletes at the major collegiate level stay on campus 12 months a year, concentrating on their sports around their busy class schedule.
During prior generations, most student-athletes would head home and work summer jobs and work out with their high school friends or teammates.
But, how have the times changed.
Often times, once student-athletes arrived on campus following their high school graduation whether it be a week later or two months later, chances are they aren’t leaving campus to head home unless it is for a short visit.
Why did this become the norm?
Major sports programs, especially in the revenue-generating sports like college football and basketball, are under the microscope to win more than ever and the head coaches know their time to produce grows shorter each and every season, and year.
The days of college football coaches, and to a lesser extent their basketball brethren, getting 8-to-10 years to build a program are all but extinct.
Ravenous fan bases have become impatient beyond belief and big-time money donors feel their six and seven figure donations to their favorite programs give them a voice in the happenings of the program.
The trickledown effect, or should we say trickle up effect, is that athletic directors feel pressure from the boosters and university Board of Trustees about head coaches and it leaves a shorter leash for the coaching staffs to produce.
The athletic directors feel the pinch and in turn the pressure is put on to the coaches.
Who do the coaches allocate that pressure to?
The players.
Hence a big reason why athletes stay on campus year-round is coaches get on them to stay in town, work out, take classes and study film so that they are more prepared for the next season.
A fad that is growing bigger every year is the high school senior football players who do their required schoolwork and have it completed by the end of the first semester of their senior year so that they can enroll to the university that they signed a National Letter of Intent with so they can get a jump on the weight program and working out with their new teammates.
By doing this, the football players get the spring semester and two semesters of classes in before they begin fall camp.
It used to be where the incoming freshmen would arrive to campus just before fall camp started and then have to navigate the academic workload of their first semester as they are trying to find their way onto the field via the depth chart.
But now, the freshmen who arrive in January can have around 30 credits in the books before suiting up for their first game.
If student-athletes are given a redshirt or a medical redshirt, they end up with 10 semesters to do complete their degrees.
Some of them finish early and start a Master’s degree program, or the growing trend is for the student-athletes to finish their Bachelor’s degree in three years. This allows them to transfer, without penalty, and be eligible to play at their new school right away.
The newest way for the coaches to get the student-athletes onto campus early is to have them enroll in May and start classes during the first summer session. This can only happen when the high school seniors have completed all of their work by the date of the first summer session.
Coaches are always looking for ways to get their newest players onto campus early and there will be even more ways for them to legally dance around rules.
The pressure felt by the athletic directors and coaches have helped fuel the near extinction of three-sport stars, and it has unfortunately forced young kids into sport-specific specialization at a way too young age.