“Female college athletes make great employees; and male college football and basketball players pay a physical price later in life.”
The article suggests that female athletes may be better prepared to compete in the work world after graduation.
(photo credit: Florida State University)
I suspect that academic standards are rarely reduced for female college athletes the way that they are for men’s football and basketball players. Men football players have the additional handicap that the sports turns their brains into mush.
So the women athletes are just as smart as the rest of the student body but they have a mental toughness that competitive sports develops. Sounds like a winning combination. I would expect that non-scholarship men athletes fare the same way.
The article may suggest that, but the data of the study does not suggest that female athletes do better than male athletes. Female athletes do better than male basketball and football players, but do not do better than male athletes of other sports (emphasis mine):
I’m also kind of confused as to where exactly this data is coming from. The 24 page report issued by Gallup on the study mentioned in the article: https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/galluppurdueindex-report-2014.pdf does not contain the words “athlete,” “athletics” or “sport”
^That makes sense - also female athletes generally don’t have any prospects of a pro sports career so may be more realistic in preparing for life after college. The odds of making it in pro sports are also very slim for male athletes, of course, but in football, basketball, baseball, and hockey the very top male athletes can make a living in their sport. There are women’s leagues in basketball, soccer and hockey but the pay is a small fraction of that in men’s leagues. Tennis is a sport where the top female players make a lot of money, but the top pros don’t seem to have played in college for the most part.
The article, however, provides no data on female versus male athletes, so it doesn’t really follow up on the headline. The only numbers I see are for males. I found another summary of the Gallup-Purdue research at this link. This mentions higher engagement for female versus male college graduates in general, but I don’t see anything on athletes.
https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/galluppurdueindex-report-2014.pdf
If anyone knows where to find the data the headline alludes to, please post.
Here is a link that seems to be more on point.
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/189227/female-student-athletes-win-big-great-jobs-lives.aspx
So for comparing female vs. male athletes:
So when it comes to physical well being, it does seem like there’s a meaningful difference. I’d hardly call 52 vs 53% for social well being a meaningful difference.
@bluewater2015 It’s even harder to make it in tennis than other sports you mentioned. The only way to actually make money is to be in the top 100 or so players in the entire world. Anything else and the expenses are so high the revenue from winning tournaments hardly makes up for it
They aren’t saying the women are successful in their sport after graduation, but in their careers. The athlete is successful in business or teaching or law or medicine compared to non-athletes. It shouldn’t matter if the student played tennis or golf or ran or swam.
The relevance of the lack of pro sports opportunities for female athletes is that it may make them more realistic about preparing for post-college life than male athletes, where in a number of sports men can make a living (albeit only a very small percentage of men). Just a hypothesis.
Perhaps the distinction is not between female and male student-athletes, but the distinction between student-athletes in revenue sports (men’s basketball and football) and student-athletes in other sports (including both women’s and men’s sports).
Good point ucbalumnus. Though I might expand the revenue sports list to include sports with lucrative professional leagues (for a select few) even though they’re not necessarily revenue sports in college - baseball, men’s hockey, men’s golf. Possibly also men’s soccer and men’s/women’s tennis, though it doesn’t seem that many pros go to college in those sports.
“Possibly also men’s soccer and men’s/women’s tennis, though it doesn’t seem that many pros go to college in those sports.”
Sure one can turn down lucrative endorsements and prize money and go on to compete in college and win all sorts of Division 1 honors… But because the athletic career is so short, losing 4-5 years of potential earnings during the peak performance years is not a smart business decision.
Missy Franklin turned down all the money as a 17 year old to swim in college. She did it for 2 years and has now gone pro and will earn will she can and return to college after her money years.
She wanted to do it all and was lucky her parents could afford for her to do it and stay an amateur.
Taylor Fritz threw away college and surged from 700 in the world to 80 in the world(pending new ranking update) in a span of 3 months.
He is a senior class of 2016 and has earned 130k in prize money in just a few months.
Fact is, women who play sports in college, and especially who continue sports at any level past college, have a lot of injuries too. The major difference would be fewer concussions for women due to not playing football.