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Only 25% of D1 football are 1st generation college grads. Discuss

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OriginalGatorHater

OriginalGatorHater

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So according to http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/first-their-family Only 25% of football players are the 1st in their family to go to college. I remember watching the U doc and Johnson was talking about how almost all the kids were 1st gen.

What has changed in the past 30 years that has lead teams to go after more middle class kids as opposed to kids from the slums/projects/hood? Are these kids not able to afford to play in Optimus leagues so they end up at a massive technical disadvantage when they get to HS? Are they just to small from poor nutrition? Are they at a massive disadvantage because their parents cant' afford to hire extra coaching or pay for gym memberships? It seems like most of these lower income kids end up at D2 or D3 schools. Are these kids from the hood really paying to go to D3 schools?

I remember when I was in HS it was the same thing as Jimmy was saying. Our basketball team was loaded with kids from the projects.
 
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OriginalGatorHater said:
So according to http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/first-their-family Only 25% of football players are the 1st in their family to go to college. I remember watching the U doc and Johnson was talking about how almost all the kids were 1st gen.

What has changed in the past 30 years that has lead teams to go after more middle class kids as opposed to kids from the slums/projects/hood? Are these kids not able to afford to play in Optimus leagues so they end up at a massive technical disadvantage when they get to HS? Are they just to small from poor nutrition? Are they at a massive disadvantage because their parents cant' afford to hire extra coaching or pay for gym memberships? It seems like most of these lower income kids end up at D2 or D3 schools. Are these kids from the hood really paying to go to D3 schools?

I remember when I was in HS it was the same thing as Jimmy was saying. Our basketball team was loaded with kids from the projects.
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Amazing how you might have missed the point which I think is obvious. On another thread last night I mentioned how much trouble we had recruiting in the late '80's because so many prospects were so weak academically or couldn't make test scores, or both.

I guess the NCAA has dropped the classification of kids as Prop 48's. So many of the kids we recruited in the late '80's were Prop 48's. They were admitted to school but were not eligible and could not even practice with the team.

I haven't lived in South Florida since the early '60's but friends living there told me in the '80's that the schools were so bad, especially in Dade. Of course, I think a lot of South Florida kids came from such poor, disadvantaged backgrounds that many (not all) of the kids were not prepared to do well in school.

Rather than unavailability of gyms, optimist leagues, etc., I think the natural process of recruiting academically qualified kids narrows recruiting to offspring of more educated parents. This is probably true even with a lot of minority kids.

It's probably just a natural outcome of targeting kids more prepared academically.
 
OriginalGatorHater said:
So according to http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/first-their-family Only 25% of football players are the 1st in their family to go to college. I remember watching the U doc and Johnson was talking about how almost all the kids were 1st gen.

What has changed in the past 30 years that has lead teams to go after more middle class kids as opposed to kids from the slums/projects/hood? Are these kids not able to afford to play in Optimus leagues so they end up at a massive technical disadvantage when they get to HS? Are they just to small from poor nutrition? Are they at a massive disadvantage because their parents cant' afford to hire extra coaching or pay for gym memberships? It seems like most of these lower income kids end up at D2 or D3 schools. Are these kids from the hood really paying to go to D3 schools?

I remember when I was in HS it was the same thing as Jimmy was saying. Our basketball team was loaded with kids from the projects.
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First, I have zero faith in the veracity of anything the NCAA does. I wouldn't trust them is they told me water was wet.

25% is not an unusually outlying number, I would think, but having not seen the study or how it defines it's data set, I can't draw any conclusions.

My suspicion is that the number may be higher, but the bigger issue is what's the economic distribution of D-1 football players relative to other data population samples among NCAA sports. I'm willing to bet that football and basketball are both at the bottom, and that certain conferences and schools are more skewed than others.

The other thing that may be suppressing the numbers to the downside are scholarship limitations.

Be interesting to see the models they are using.
 
That 25% number sounds off initially, but reading between the lines I think we are assuming that number is only for division 1 football players (that would include fbs and fcs teams). However, I think the number includes all divisions (I’m assuming of course).

If the NCAA used student athletes from all divisions, then the number doesn’t seem that far off when you consider the number of high academic division II and III programs and I’d assuming for instance most kids playing at Johns Hopkins or Tufts aren’t 1st generation.

Furthermore, even if the study was only division I the study doesn’t say if the parents finished their degrees. Go a step further and look at the proliferation of federal funding (federal loans) and other grants available to 1st generation students and you can see why the number might look lower than expected.

There are a lot of details and nuance not presented to provide proper context to the numbers. One last thing Americans are more educated (degrees, college attendance, etc.) than ever in our history a development that transcends race and to some degree socio-economic background.
 
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How many high school and younger players have parents that pay for coaches and move so their kid can play at a certain school?
 
Fewer kids are playing now. Especially the poorer kids.

There have always been talented kids who never played. But from my personal anecdotal observation, it seems that more kids are passing on youth football. Many are not capable of handling the discipline, tough love, and work. They are too used to doing what they want when they want.

Also, more people today at least try college because high paying, entry level jobs are much harder to find than in the past.

Many don’t graduate, but for these numbers it doesn’t matter.
 
This is from 40,000 feet but I'd also venture to guess that community colleges play a large role in this along with (as was mentioned) society being more "educated" than ever. Plenty of kids from the hood may now have at least one parent that spent some time on a community college campus. I think that's more likely than some realignment toward college athletes originating more from middle class upbringings.
 
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Tad Footeball said:
This is from 40,000 feet but I'd also venture to guess that community colleges play a large role in this along with (as was mentioned) society being more "educated" than ever. Plenty of kids from the hood may now have at least one parent that spent some time on a community college campus. I think that's more likely than some realignment toward college athletes originating more from middle class upbringings.
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This is from sea level...........Many kids are so focused on football, that the gap is I agree, taken up by community colleges in many instances.
The other is, that players now are so fascinated with showing that they can play in the NFL, that studies for all kids (advantaged, and disadvantaged) will show that "educated" means getting by with minimum grades, and planning on leaving early, without a meaningful degree. A Comm. College degree is OK, but not the same.
Look at the comments by recruits.
The "taking care of business" comments far outweigh "the staying to get my degree", for middle class, and disadvantaged players.
 
canesdogo said:
This is from sea level...........Many kids are so focused on football, that the gap is I agree, taken up by community colleges in many instances.
The other is, that players now are so fascinated with showing that they can play in the NFL, that studies for all kids (advantaged, and disadvantaged) will show that "educated" means getting by with minimum grades, and planning on leaving early, without a meaningful degree. A Comm. College degree is OK, but not the same.
Look at the comments by recruits.
The "taking care of business" comments far outweigh "the staying to get my degree", for middle class, and disadvantaged players.
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That all makes sense. I was just saying (and I think we're agreeing) if we're looking at the households that these kids are coming from that mom is probably way more likely now than even 15 or 20 years ago to have at least stepped foot on a community college campus. And I don't think that's reflective of the athletes coming from better economic conditions but just (slightly) better educated households.
 
OriginalGatorHater said:
So according to http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/first-their-family Only 25% of football players are the 1st in their family to go to college. I remember watching the U doc and Johnson was talking about how almost all the kids were 1st gen.

What has changed in the past 30 years that has lead teams to go after more middle class kids as opposed to kids from the slums/projects/hood? Are these kids not able to afford to play in Optimus leagues so they end up at a massive technical disadvantage when they get to HS? Are they just to small from poor nutrition? Are they at a massive disadvantage because their parents cant' afford to hire extra coaching or pay for gym memberships? It seems like most of these lower income kids end up at D2 or D3 schools. Are these kids from the hood really paying to go to D3 schools?

I remember when I was in HS it was the same thing as Jimmy was saying. Our basketball team was loaded with kids from the projects.
Click to expand...

Lack of discipline to actually complete school is probably the biggest problem. I used to teach at an alternative school down in Florida City. We got kids that were kicked out of the surrounding high schools like South Dade, Homestead and Southridge. I also have a few co-workers that still lived in the same communities as the kids we taught. We had kids that as freshman were starting on varsity, but couldn't play after freshman year because of grades. According to my former co-workers there were quite a few kids at the local parks that could play in the NFL but because of grades never got to go to college. D1 schools have much higher grade requirements that they used to. Most coaches won't even bother looking at a kid's highlight tape or come see him if he doesn't have a high enough GPA in his core courses. The kids going to the D-2 and D-3 are there probably because those schools will take kids with lower grades. Gym memberships are most likely not an issue. Football is year round now. Football coaches in high school have the kids in conditioning programs during the offseason and usually have one assistant coach who has some level of training in training and nutrition.
 
The opportunities and availability to attend college have progressed exponentially over the past 20 years. So my take would be most of the kids that are college aged now, are kids of 1st generation college attenders. We all know our DOE has spent gazillions of dollars a year trying to get inner city and minorities in college. I think these stats show it worked. Now we have a billion college graduates with nonsensical degrees that they can do nothing with. That's another issue for another day.
 
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nobeastofburden said:
The opportunities and availability to attend college have progressed exponentially over the past 20 years. So my take would be most of the kids that are college aged now, are kids of 1st generation college attenders. We all know our DOE has spent gazillions of dollars a year trying to get inner city and minorities in college. I think these stats show it worked. Now we have a billion college graduates with nonsensical degrees that they can do nothing with. That's another issue for another day.
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Blacks and Hispanics are MORE underrepresented at top colleges today than 35 years ago. No need for “own takes” when there’s data out there.
 
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nobeastofburden said:
So now we are talking top colleges. Oh well that changes things. Oh and population explosion skewers those numbers.
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Dude, I get it, many of you always have some agenda to push, but by top colleges I’m also including top public colleges as well. Link below (I’ll wait for someone to say something dumb about it)

www.nytimes.com

Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago (Published 2017)

How 100 top U.S. schools compare.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
Back to the original question, there is no question that money helps, even for a high school kid who can afford to attend camps. So much recruiting is based on camp observations so naturally, the more events a player can attend, the more opportunity to be noticed. And all it takes is 1-2 big schools to like a player and his name shoots up the rankings and everyone is now recruiting him.
And that money comes parents because the fact is, street agents can’t compete with the kind of money parents shell out for kids to be noticed in sports. And of course there is a direct correlation between income and education. So the more educated the parent, the wealthier the parent, and the more likely it is that the player is noticed and offered a scholarship, which means the more likely it that the player isn’t the 1st generation to have attended college.
 
We spend more money on childhood education than any country on the planet. Kids got passed when the pc liberal pansies took over and now we have college graduates that absolutely have garbage degrees. You AOC worshippers don't see the irony. Boston U grad working as a bartender. That is my AGENDA. TRUTH. Oh no jobs for us in debt college kids, I can't believe my African studies, gender studies, community organizer degree, and blah blah blah degrees aren't providing for me.
 
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