Chad Barrett’s on the phone. His scratchy voice is indicative of a weary young man who sounds torn. He talks about the thrill of doing what you love for a living, not to mention the fact that he’s making good money doing it – the kind of money that few people even twice his age earn. He knows he’s one of the lucky few who have been given the gift of superior athletic ability, and he’s determined to work hard in order to capitalize on his talent and make the most of his opportunities.
But there’s a hint of doubt in Barrett’s tone that suggests he may not have made the right choice. Maybe leaving school two full years early and moving thousand miles away from home at the ripe old age of 20 wasn’t the best move.
And then it’s as if Barrett catches himself. Before there’s even a moment for him to dwell on the possibilities of finishing up his degree at UCLA, he says, “It was a tough decision to have to make, but I felt that it was the better long-term choice and will ultimately help my soccer career.”
Barrett was a star soccer recruit coming out of San Diego two years ago and was recruited by several of the top programs around the country. His decision to go to UCLA, he says, was the right one, as he could easily envision himself donning a blue and gold uniform while living not too far from mom and dad. And the decision proved to pay dividends as he became a freshman All-American while adapting to college life. It was then that the rumors started to fly.
“After my first year, other players and coaches were telling me that I was highly recruited by Major League Soccer,” Barrett said. “That was the first time I really thought about leaving college early to go pro.”
Barrett spent the next year of college preparing himself mentally and physically, with an eye on the MLS Amateur Draft in hopes of becoming a professional soccer player. After an equally successful sophomore campaign coupled with a second straight year competing on the U.S. Under-20 National team, Barrett decided to leave Westwood with only half of his college career completed.
“It was an amazingly difficult process because I loved my time at UCLA and the experience of college is so unique,” Barrett said. “But more than anything else, the fear of not getting an education was always at the back of my mind.”
“In the end, I knew that these kinds of opportunities don’t come around often in life and I wanted to seize it,” Barrett said. “My education is still important.”
Barrett was drafted with third overall pick in this year’s MLS draft by the Chicago Fire. He talks about living in the Midwest for the first time and the trouble adjusting to life in a big city with even bigger responsibilities.
“There are some growing pains, for sure,” Barrett. “I’m happy with where I am, but being far from home and becoming an adult basically two years sooner is tough. I’ve really matured quickly.”
Barrett talks about enrolling in general education courses during the spring after the MLS season finishes up. He hopes to slowly but surely complete his education over the next ten years while he pursues a dream he has had since he was a child.
Still, he knows the difficulty many other athletes have had juggling extracurricular activities with their livelihood. For the first time in Barrett’s life, school is now an extracurricular activity.
Chad Barrett might not seem to have a whole lot in common with Jane Park. One is a rising young forward for Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire and the other is an incoming UCLA freshman golfer. But they are bound together by a rising issue in college athletics. It’s nothing new to find highly recruited prospects in football, basketball, or baseball foregoing college eligibility to make millions of dollars in the professional ranks. The big three American sports have adapted to this phenomenon over the last thirty or so years, ever since Moses Malone became the first high schooler to skip college entirely to play in the NBA.
In recent years, however, the so-called “Olympic sports” have seen their athletes follow a similar path, in sports ranging from men’s soccer to women’s golf.
Looking at the NCAA student-athlete graduation rates, nothing really jumps out. Since 1987, the aggregate average for all students graduating over fours year in 60%. The average for all student-athletes is 58%, which indicates that the number of young adults who leave college to pursue a professional career in athletics are matched by the same number of students who leave school early for a career in some other field.
“The NCAA has worked hard to keep student-athletes in school and remind them how increasingly difficult it is to become a professional athlete,” said Kent Barrett (no relation to Chad), an NCAA administrator. “We stress that going pro is nothing to fall back on, and when in doubt, stay in school and get the diploma.”
But the graduation rate can appear skewed, as it doesn’t take into account the number of students who graduate in five or six years as opposed to just four. According to the data provided by the NCAA, student-athletes who don’t graduate at all are counted the same as an engineering major who graduates in five years.
While the NCAA may portray the statistics as being slightly better than they really are, many coaches and players at collegiate level concede that the increased national exposure of the Olympic sports has provided more career opportunities to student-athletes in a wide range of sports that were once considered “secondary”.
Among them are women’s golf and men’s soccer, which takes us back to Barrett and Park as prime examples of athletes who chose professional leagues over college, and college over the professional leagues.
Park won the 2004 Women’s Amateur Championship as a high school senior, no small feat to be sure. Her booming success as a minor led her to flirt with the idea of turning pro without ever stepping foot inside a college classroom. Just as Barrett was, she was confronted by a number of opinions from friends and family who wanted to impart their words of wisdom.
“Everybody was giving me advice,” Park said. “My family members were saying, ‘go pro, go pro.’ But I wanted to make the decision on my own.”
“In the end, I just couldn’t envision myself not going to college and not having that experience,” Park said.
But does she regret not turning pro? Was it tempting to follow the successful footsteps of Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie, two young female golfers who turned pro before their 18th birthday?
“Not at all,” Park said. “I have to mature as a person before I really even think about becoming a professional athlete. And to develop like that, I knew UCLA was where I wanted to be.”
Park does not think any less of those in her position who opted for a career rather than an education.
“There’s no right move,” Park said. “It changes from person to person, depending on whatever is in their heart. I knew that I had my heart set on coming to UCLA and going to college, but if someone wants to turn pro and they think that it’s time to move on, good luck to them. We each have different personalities and priorities, none better or worse.”
Park’s perspective is enlightening. It is a common opinion that a lot of students are at college only to get a good job rather than to achieve enlightenment at an institute of higher learning. But can the public really blame college-age athletes for going pro when so many would likely do the same if given the opportunity?
“It gets to a point where we have to trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and to live their lives how they would like,” UCLA tennis coach Billy Martin said. “But having that degree is a nice thing to have because it’s impossible to predict what the future holds.”
Martin would know. He was a UCLA singles national champion in 1975 and left Westwood before he graduated to pursue a career in tennis. Martin got his degree from the University of Redlands 14 years later.
“It is interesting how more and more sports, though, are now having their athletes turn pro early,” Martin said. “When I was attending UCLA it was mainly football, basketball, baseball, and tennis. In tennis, Jimmy Connors left UCLA early in the 1970s. But we’re seeing a lot of other international sports gain popularity here in America.”
The ethical choices of staying in school or going pro appear to be similar to the choices that basketball or football players have been posed with over the last quarter-century. But how can the smaller sports adapt to what the basketball or football programs have been dealing with?
Women’s golf coach Carrie Forsythe, for example, is getting used to players in her sport leaving school early and foregoing college altogether. Since 2001, 14 women’s golfers have turned pro before earning their college diplomas. The list includes Paula Creamer, who was heavily recruited by both UCLA and Stanford before she decided to turn pro. Creamer had immediate success, capturing rookie-of-the-year honors on the LGPA tour. Then there is Michelle Wie, a 15-year-old golf prodigy who is not just competing in the LPGA, but also the men’s tour. While she has yet to graduate high school, it doesn’t seem likely that she will be going to college in the coming years, as she already has many members of the sports world fixated on her.
“As more and more people in Paula’s or Michelle Wie’s position have success, more golfers will most likely flirt with the idea of going pro early,” Forsythe said. “It’s only natural when you see someone you compete with have all kinds of success and make a good amount of money so young.”
Forsythe is yet another sports coach who stresses education, but she also has come to the realization that her sport and many others are changing, and not necessarily for the worse.
“In some way, it’s a good sign for UCLA or other programs when a variety of athletes – not just basketball players – can have a professional career,” Forsythe said. “They put in so many hours as youngsters, not because of the money but because they genuinely love the sports. It’s nice to see that they get rewarded.”
Meanwhile, men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo witnessed one of his best players leave his program early this summer as junior midfielder Benny Feilhaber took a job with the club soccer team Hamburger SV in Germany. Salcedo coaches a sport that has been the biggest international sport for quite some time, yet has been notoriously underrepresented in the United States. However, the recent surge in popularity in American soccer has been conjoined with the increasing success the U.S. Soccer team has had in international competition. The U.S. advanced to the quarterfinals in the 2002 World Cup in Japan, a feat that very few expected. The emergence of Freddy Adu, the 16-year-old soccer pro with the D.C. United, has signaled yet another change in American soccer.
“With soccer, especially, we are starting to catch up with the rest of the world and you can see that with Chad or Benny starting their careers early on,” Salcedo said. “Other countries have been used to 18-year-old soccer pros. It might be around the corner here at home.”
The next few years might dictate whether the trend in Olympic sports continues with more players leaving school early, or whether there is a shift towards student-athletes staying in school to obtain degrees. Sports has always been a copycat system, and how many more players opt out of school may very well depend on the level of success Freddy Adu or Michelle Wie experience.