The Odds of College Athletes Going Pro: Dreams vs. Reality

For many young athletes, the dream of playing professional sports is a powerful motivator, driving them to dedicate countless hours to training and competition. This dream often leads them to pursue college athletics, with the hope that it will serve as a stepping stone to a professional career. However, the reality is that only a small fraction of college athletes ever achieve this goal. While the allure of fame and fortune is strong, the statistics reveal a significant gap between the aspirations of college players and the likelihood of actually making it to the pros.

The Allure of Professional Sports

Surely a lot of people dream of becoming a sports star. When asked about their expectations, most student-athletes are surprisingly very confident about the possibility of becoming a professional football player, according to the survey conducted by NCAA in 2016. But that statistic often fails to register with many of the thousands of young people across the nation who enter a university, singularly focused on the rare chance that they will join the ranks of professional athletes. I know this because I worked as a volunteer with Division I football players for the summers of 2015 to 2017 to help develop their leadership skills and build unity among team members.The Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative partnered with Utah State University and Louisiana Tech University to survey youth sports parents. Roughly two in 10 youth sports parents believe their child has the ability to eventually play Division I college sports, and one in 10 think their child could reach the pros or Olympics.

The Harsh Reality: Low Probability of Going Pro

Given that only 1 in 4,233 high school players go from high school to college to the pros, there is a giant gap between college players’ dreams and reality. According to the data released by NCAA, there were 1,083,308 high school participants in 2016, and 73,660 or nearly 6.8% of them got the chance to compete in NCAA. In addition, only 2.6% of high school players are eligible to the Division I-NACC catually has three divisions, and Division I is the highest one, which stores most resources and opportunities. Roughly speaking, there were 1,083,308 high school football players competing, and eventually 251 made it to pro. After simple calculation, we can get that the percentage of student-athletes going pro is approximately 0.023%. In baseball, for instance, only 2.1% of all college players transition from college to the pros. Of the 73,712 NCAA football players, about 16,380 are draft-eligible and 254 will be drafted, meaning about 1.2% of college football players will go pro. Of the 18,816 male basketball players, 4,181 are draft-eligible and 60 will be drafted, but only 52 will go pro, or a 1.2% chance a college basketball player will play professionally.

Last month, the Aspen Institute reported that the biggest driver promoting early sport specialization is children simply making the high school team. Because some parent expectations are so high, “they are extremely financially and emotionally invested in their kids’ sports,” iSport360 founder Ian Goldberg said at a 2025 Project Play Summit session on the parent survey results. “They’re literally delusional.”

The Importance of Education

For student-athletes who do not earn college degree, whether it’s because they’re no longer eligible to play, ran out of money for college or declared themselves as eligible for the NFL draft but didn’t get drafted, the end game is the same. They find themselves at the proverbial finish line without a degree or a professional contract. While only one college football player wins the coveted Heisman Trophy each year, a college degree, on the other hand, is attainable by every player on every team. More importantly, a college degree enhances a person’s ability to get a job and earn a living. The best bet for student-athletes to realize their full potential, then, is to make sure that they stay dedicated to earning their degrees, while continuing to work on becoming professional athletes. But student-athletes cannot be expected to do this on their own.

Read also: A Look at College Athlete Injuries

Con 2: Very few college athletes will go pro, so athletes should take advantage of the education being offered in exchange for playing a college sport. The reality is that the vast majority of college athletes will never play professionally. The NCAA noted, “[p]rofessional opportunities are extremely limited and the likelihood of a high school or even college athlete becoming a professional athlete is very low. In other words, it would be more prudent and more profitable for college athletes to focus on education as their compensation. Amy Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said of the Gallup findings, “It’s a positive report for the educational benefits for college sports, and it reinforces the point that we’ve tried to make over the years.

Graduation Rates and Academic Challenges

Are the student-athletes being brought on campus to earn a degree or play sports? Harper’s research reveals that only about 55% of black male student-athletes graduate within six years. It’s not hard to see why graduation rates are lower for players at schools where football is a priority. Being a college athlete is a demanding and intense full-time job. An NCAA survey, for example, revealed that practicing and playing college football alone required 43.3 hours per week. The lower graduation rates for student-athletes are troubling for many reasons, particularly for those who don’t get drafted.

Adding insult to sometimes literal injury, college athletes are also frequently denied the NCAA’s other form of “compensation”: a quality education. The NCAA polices athletes’ finances but does not ensure a quality education.

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Deals

ARCHIVED TOPIC: In light of the rise of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals among college athletes, this topic was archived on Mar. 22, 2024, and will no longer be updated. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) is a nonprofit organization formed in 1906 that regulates college athletics, including game rules, athlete eligibility, and college tournaments. As of Mar. The NCAA is seemingly the final authority to decide whether college athletes should be paid to play college sports. California was the first state to pass a NIL (name, image, and likeness) law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2023. But California was quickly followed by more states. The NCAA was scheduled to vote on new NIL rules in Jan. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case (National Collegiate Athletic Association v. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Mar. 31, 2021 as the NCAA March Madness tournament heads into Final Four games just days later on Apr. 3. Gabe Feldman, Professor of Sports Law, Director of the Sports Law Program and Associate Provost for NCAA compliance at Tulane University, noted that the last time the NCAA was at the Supreme Court was in 1984 (NCAA vs. the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma). The ruling changed the broadcast regulations for college football. Feldman explained, “That was a shape-shifting decision that in many ways fundamentally changed economics of college football and college football television. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA cannot ban certain payments to student athletes under the premise of maintaining amateurism. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, stated, “traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. On June 28, 2021, the NCAA Division I Council recommended to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors that student athletes be allowed to profit from their name, image, and likeness. Schools would not be allowed to pay students and no one could offer compensation for students to attend a particular school. On June 30, 2021, fewer than 12 hours before some states’ NIL laws went into effect, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors issued an interim ruling stating that Bylaw 12 (the rules that say athletes cannot receive payment) will not be enforced. The University of North Carolina became the first school to organize group licensing deals for student athletes in July 2021. UNC athletes will be able to earn money for NIL marketing including UNC trademarks and logos in groups of three or more athletes. For example, a student athlete will be compensated for the sale of a jersey featuring their name, or for a sponsorship deal in which they appear wearing a UNC jersey. By Jan. NCAA president Charlie Baker sent a letter on Dec. 5, 2023, to the 362 Division I member schools calling for reformations including creating a separate division for the top-earning schools that would mimic professional sports and updating NIL regulations so female athletes could better benefit.

Arguments For and Against Paying College Athletes

A 2019 Seton Hall Sports Poll found that 60% of those surveyed agreed that college athletes should be allowed compensation for their name, image, and/or likeness, while 32% disagreed, and 8% were unsure.

Read also: Enrollment at Notre Dame

Arguments in Favor of Paying College Athletes

Pro 1: The NCAA, colleges, and universities profit unfairly from the work and likenesses of college athletes. The NCAA reported over $1.06 billion in revenue in 2017 (the most recent available numbers). In 2018, NCAA president Mark Emmert was paid more than $2.7 million. Michael Sokolove, author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino (2018), explained, “If you look at a program like [University of] Louisville, …they generate about $45 million a year in revenue. They give out 13 scholarships. That adds up to about $400,000 a year. The rest of it gets spread out to the coach, who makes $8 million a year, to the assistant coaches, who make as much as a half-million dollars a year. All throughout the athletic department, people are making six-figure salaries. As of Nov. 17, 2020, the University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban was the highest paid NCAA college football coach, making $9.3 million per year. The highest paid men’s basketball coach was the University of Kentucky head coach, John Calipari, who was paid $8.2 million per year. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, who was forecast to earn about $11 million in 2023, says, “I would take less money for the players to have a share. College athletes, arguably the stars of the show who earn millions year after year for the well-paid NCAA executives, coaches, and staff, were forbidden by the NCAA from not only being paid for their work-, but from seeking other related compensation such as endorsement deals. And, as John I. Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick, President and Athletics Director of Notre Dame University argue, “We have been vocal in our conviction that student-athletes should be allowed to… profit from their celebrity - for one simple reason: Other students are allowed to. If a college student is a talented artist or musician no one begrudges him the chance to make money from his skills.

Pro 2: College athletes are risking their bodies as well as their future careers and earning potential to play for colleges and universities while often receiving a sub-par education. Governor of California Gavin Newsom, stated, “Collegiate student athletes put everything on the line - their physical health, future career prospects and years of their lives to compete. Colleges reap billions from these student athletes’ sacrifices and success but, in the same breath, block them from earning a single dollar. Azmatullah Hussaini, President of the New York/New Jersey chapter of the American Muslim Health Professionals, and Jules Lipoff, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, offered additional context: especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, “[g]iven that athletes are disproportionately Black in the biggest revenue-generating sports - football and basketball - this dynamic also evokes America’s horrific history of unpaid slave labor. The NCAA requires players to have health insurance but does not pay for that insurance and can refuse to pay medical expenses for sports injuries, some of which can have life-long consequences for the players’ bodies and career opportunities.

Pro 3: College athletes are often valued at more than $1 million, but they (and their families) frequently live below the poverty line. College athletes are required to make up the difference between NCAA scholarships and the actual cost of living. Tuition shortfalls amount to thousands of dollars per year and leave about 85% of players to live below the poverty line. For example, fair market value for a University of Texas football player was $513,922. About 25% of Division I athletes reported food poverty in the past year and almost 14% reported being homeless in the past year. The NCAA keeps players in poverty and denied them ways to earn money, while making millions on their performance.

Arguments Against Paying College Athletes

Con 1: Scholarships are fair financial compensation for college athletes, especially considering the precarious finances of athletic departments. According to the NCAA, the organization provides “more than $3.6 billion in athletic scholarships annually to more than 180,000 student-athletes.” Divided equitably, each student would receive about $20,000 per year. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average total cost of public college (tuition, fees, room, and board) for the 2017-18 academic year was $17,797. Further, most college programs do not generate the income needed to run their athletic programs, much less pay athletes. In fiscal year 2019, the collective expenses of the 65 Power Five schools-the largest and richest Division I schools in the NCAA-exceeded revenue by $7 million. Other Division I schools had an almost $23 million collective difference between revenue and expenses. If students were paid, the NCAA argues, many colleges and universities would have to offer fewer scholarships and the remaining scholarships would be distributed unfairly to top football and men’s basketball players because those two sports bring in the most revenue. Paying players would also limit the literal and figurative playing fields to elite universities with large budgets. As John Thelin, Research Professor of History of Higher Education & Public Policy at the University of Kentucky, explained, “paying salaries to players will increase [athletic] program expenditures without necessarily increasing revenues… [and] a handful of powerful programs will stand to gain in competition for athletic talent simply because they can afford to pay salaries.

Con 3: Paying college athletes would not solve the real problem: the American amateur sports system is broken. Football and basketball players cannot play professionally immediately after high school. These rules can effectively limit players’ options to playing in college or choosing another profession altogether. Most players have no real “amateur” sport option and those who would rather not go to college have no other established feeder system to make it to a professional team. Further confusing the issue, the NCAA does not have a consistent or fair definition of “amateurism” and allows some significant forms of financial compensation. College athletes are allowed to compete in the Olympic Games and be financially compensated, such as Joseph Schooling, a University of Texas swimmer, who earned a $740,000 bonus for winning Singapore’s first gold medal ever at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games for the 100m butterfly. College athletes may also play a second sport professionally and be compensated, such as Clemson quarterback Kyle Parker who earned a $1.4 million baseball signing bonus from the Colorado Rockies in 2010 while still playing football for the Tigers. B. David Ridpath, Associate Professor of Sports Administration at Ohio University, noted, “The only amateur quality about college athletics is that colleges refuse to pay their players.” Ridpath explained, “The United States is the only country in the world that has a significant portion of elite athletic development and commercialized sport embedded within its education systems. Consider that ten of the biggest outdoor sports stadiums in the world (excluding auto racing venues) are American college football stadiums. To fix the problem, and separate athletes who are getting an education just because they want to play a sport from those who actually want to go to college, the United States needs a true amateur or minor league that feeds into professional sports.

Parent Expectations and Youth Sports

While this is surely true for some parents, there is also nuance to parents’ expectations. “I thought my daughter could play professionally or in the Olympics as a water polo player. “I also think it’s important to remember that it’s OK. Dreaming is a big part of what we’re doing for our kids. … That’s sort of our role. “But then there comes a point where we have to pivot, and this is one of the biggest problems. We don’t pivot with our kids. We stay stuck on their initial dreams. We stay stuck on our dreams for them. And when they change, we have to change. Or when society tells us we have to change because they’re not making their high school or middle school team, then we have to pivot with them.” In the Aspen Institute survey, parents of Black children reported the strongest belief that their child can eventually reach the highest levels of sports. They were two times more likely to think their child can play professionally than White and Hispanic/Latino parents. Tackle football parents had the highest belief their child can play high school, Division I and professionally. Parents of boys and girls had nearly identical sports aspirations for their child. “For a small subset of kids, they go on to be elite athletes and that can be really terrific for them and their future prospects,” University of Baltimore law professor Dionne Koller said in a recent interview promoting her new book More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport. “But for the millions of kids who get involved, continuing to professionalize youth sports by emphasizing year-round training and skill-building can be a little too much for their minds and bodies.” For some families, simply accessing expensive sports leagues is a barrier. “These data reinforce the true value of sport: that when children engage in appropriately designed settings, they experience better quality of life across a number of personal domains,” said Travis Dorsch, co-author of the Aspen Institute parent study and founder of the Families in Sport Lab at Utah State University. “That is the promise we should be focused on keeping.” On-field success is not the only endgame parents hope their children achieve through sports, even among those who believe their child can thrive athletically. In the Aspen survey, roughly three-quarters of sports parents said their child’s mental health, physical fitness, emotional control, and social well-being improves when they regularly play sports. Nearly eight in 10 urban parents (79%) reported their child’s emotional control typically increases when regularly playing sports, higher than rural (72%) and suburban (69%) parents. Other research also shows nuance about what parents want from sports. A 2024 study of the San Francisco Giants’ youth baseball program found that the Junior Giants’ focus on youth-development goals, such as building character, can increase the likelihood of children returning to the program. The Junior Giants is a free program for children ages 5-18 and doesn’t keep score of games or create standings. For every unit increase in positive changes to their child’s confidence, integrity, leadership and teamwork, parents were 2.38 times more likely to report intentions to return to the program, according to the research led by San Francisco State University professor Nicole Bolter. However, one reason some parents indicated they won’t return was their belief that the program was not competitive enough and teaching proper sports skills. “I don’t think parents see sports as either/or (for their child’s outcomes),” Bolter said. “They want it all for their child - they’ll be pro athletes and great citizens. Parents are not looking to compromise on anything.” Youth sports parents generally appreciate the value of the institution. “Some coaches and sports administrators might disagree with that rating, but it strikes me as about right,” said Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program and author of Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. “Most parents are reasonable, try hard to check their behavior and don’t cause problems. Because society embraces sports as part of a positive childhood, parents feel like they are succeeding as a parent when their child excels in sports, Koller said. “Parents still refuse to believe this, but the best way to become an elite athlete can be having fun, participating in a range of sports, and letting kids’ minds and bodies grow up,” she said. In the community where Mape lives, she finds many children worry that their coaches won’t play them if they make mistakes and that their parents will stop loving them if they fail. “When children don’t want to play, we have to realize it’s about them and not us,” Mape said. “We have to connect with them in very different ways. It’s not, ‘Good job but.’ It’s just, ‘Good job.’”

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