An Ohio State University Study Says That 27% of Parents Think it's Likely Their Child Will Become a College Scholarship Athlete

Ohio State News – Many children grow up dreaming – or maybe even expecting – that they will become a star in football, basketball or whatever their favorite sport may be.

Most parents have more realistic expectations of their children’s future athletic achievement, a new study finds. But a substantial minority believe their kids will beat the odds and become collegiate, pro or even Olympic athletes.

In a survey of 785 American parents, 34% thought it was somewhat or very likely that their child would become a small-college athlete, 27% thought it was likely they would become a college scholarship athlete, and 17% thought it was somewhat or very likely they would become a professional or Olympic athlete.

This story was written by Jeff Grabmeier of the Ohio State News about a month ago. The study was conducted by OSU professor of sociology Chris Knoester. But it just came across it today after Big Cat referenced it on The Yak, and I had to look it up for myself. I shouldn't be surprised at those numbers. Nothing about my experience playing youth sports as a child, or from my 10-years of umpiring youth travel baseball has led me to believe otherwise. But it will never cease to amaze me how shockingly delusional some parents are about their kid's athletic potential.

34% of parents thinking it's likely their child becomes a small-college athlete is by far the most reasonable number highlighted. Most kids with a pulse and four-working limbs can play "small college" sports if they really want to. Especially if you're counting junior colleges. Are you familiar with the stylings of Free Lutheran Bible College Basketball? This is a long video (it's a full game highlight), but if you skip ahead and watch a couple possessions, you'll see what I mean.

Not many people would actually go to these lengths, but if you're willing to move your kid anywhere, you can find a school somewhere in the United States where most anyone can technically become a collegiate athlete.

But 27% of parents with kids who play sports believe their kid is going to get a scholarship is a little more unsettling. Again, if you really want to get technical about that number, you can get an athletic scholarship to play in junior college. I'm not super privy to the world of junior college athletics, but I'm sure there are kids out there at tiny little NJCAA schools who are playing sports "on athletic scholarship", but the scholarship is nothing more than $500 towards a meal plan. Some junior colleges might give those to all their student-athletes across the board, so long as they graduate high school with a GPA of 2.0 or higher.

However, I don't imagine those are the types of athletic scholarships most of these parents from the survey had in mind. Because 17% of them thought it was somewhat or very likely that their child would become a professional or Olympic athlete. When in reality...

Only about 7% of high school athletes continue to play sports in college. And the odds of becoming a pro athlete are much smaller than that. For example, the NCAA estimates that only 1.5% of NCAA football players get drafted into the NFL.

It's amazing how many people don't understand just how good you have to be to play college sports. Even at the D-II or D-III level. Obviously, some sports are harder than others. For example, I've always said that if you have the money, and a daughter who loves the game, you could make pretty much any little girl into a collegiate golfer. If your daughter is consistently shooting in the low-40's on 9 holes for her high school golf team, and occasionally dipping into the high 30's, she can get a portion of her college paid for. Probably not enough to make up for the amount of money it will cost you for 10+ years of golf lessons and greens fees. But the barrier of entry talent-wise for women's college golf isn't especially high.

But when it comes to the four major sports (and soccer), so many parents just have no clue how good those college athletes they watch on TV actually are. They think their small town of 20,000 people is representative of the talent pool across all of America. Across all of the world. They see that their child is head-and-shoulders more talented than their literal next door neighbor, and immediately jump to, "Oh wow. My kid is fucking SPECIAL."

And with some parents (the real asshole delusional ones), when it inevitably gets to the point in their child's life where they start to realize they might not be on track to play point guard in the Big Ten, they blame the kid. They think it's their child's fault for not working hard enough. When in reality, hard work isn't even half the battle. You can lock your kid in a gym and run drills for the entirety of his childhood. You can send game film of your 6-foot-1 model student making the smart basketball play to every college in America. But while you're dedicating your life to getting your child noticed, Ohio State has an assistant coach on a flight to Uganda to meet some 6-foot-10 kid who picked up a basketball for the first time last week. Because their student manager saw one grainy TikTok of him leaping over a giraffe. 

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If some of these parents saw the backup point guard for Arkansas-Pine Bluff play 1-on-1, they'd probably assume he was 30 PPG NBA player. Six-foot-nothing Jose Alvarado of the New Orleans Pelicans would do things athletically that would melt their brains in person. The AND-1 Mixtape tour was made up of players who aren't even close to cutting it in the NBA. Maybe not even overseas.

Maybe this survey happened to catch a group of parents who are especially out of touch with reality. But 17% of them thinking it's somewhat or very likely that their child will become a professional or Olympic athlete is genuinely concerning. There are far worse things you can do as a parent than push sports on your kid. You can learn a lot of valuable life lessons from playing sports. Especially team sports. But for god sakes people… don't put all your parenting eggs in the athlete basket just because your son has above average hand-eye coordination.