Opportunity Cost and Advisors in Amateur Athletics

A one sentence preamble: Gone are the days when amateur athletes did not have to specialize in one sport to be “good enough”. 

There is a segment of athletes in the upper percentiles of talent who are “almost always almost good enough” to be offered a college scholarship or to sign a lucrative professional contract. This segment of athletes is faced with a myriad of influences that keep the goal with in reach. Naturally, these influences are strong because the athlete is close to “making it” at every step of the way in their athletic development. 

However, those influences must be tested with a positive process that creates a road map to get from point A to point B holistically. Left untested, the influences represent an unacceptable risk to personal development for athletes in that segment – those who were “almost always almost good enough”.

Opportunity Cost

What are these athletes left with when their athletic career ends? There’s no doubt they are left with great memories and experiences and many valuable lessons learned. But, at what expense? Surely, they passed on other athletic (or non-athletic) opportunities that could have produced great memories and experiences and many valuable lessons learned, too.

Was the opportunity cost too much to pay? I suppose that the answer to the above questions can be better understood in the context of the following question, to be asked perhaps ten years after an athlete’s (in the above defined segment) career ends: 

Looking back on your amateur athletic career, would you have used more of your time to develop other areas of your life?

Advisors

There is a provision in the NCAA bylaws that allows athletes to employ the services of an advisor, while not jeopardizing their NCAA eligibility. This provision allows athletes and their guardians to pay "advisors” who might offer advice to the student-athlete and his/her family. The NCAA rules are intended to treat the advisor as an extension of the family.

The benefits of a family advisor are many, and should be available to the party that is quite often the most vulnerable – the student-athlete. A student-athlete not only has his/her athletic career on the line, but his/her holistic development at stake as well.