Bypassing education for NBA wealth.

An unprecedented number of talented high school basketball players made plans to skip college to enter this year's National Basketball Association draft, following in the sneaker prints of NBA stars such as league MVP Kevin Garnett and last year's No. 1 draft pick LeBron James. This trend, while celebrated by some, is a source of alarm to many others, including NBA Commissioner David Stern, who has advocated the implementation of a minimum age requirement for drain, eligibility.

Not so long ago, being athletically gifted was one of the few avenues for the economically disadvantaged to gain access to higher education. While the ultimate hoop dream may have been to become the next Jordan, the real prize was the college degree that would serve as the foundation for success long after the sports heroics became cherished memory. Now, instead of athletic ability serving as a means to a valuable end, it has become the goal itself. This is a recipe for disaster, especially for young African American males.

Those who support the right of young athletes to skip college and go straight to the pros argue that an 18-year-old is an adult who should be free to pursue any vocation he or she proves qualified for. If that means passing up four years as an unpaid "student" athlete to earn millions of dollars (not counting endorsement income) as an NBA phenom, what's the problem, they ask.

First, the rare successes of the likes of Kobe, LeBron, and KG must be weighed against the shattered dreams of the dozens of high school seniors who failed to make the leap to the pros over the past several years. Even the few teenagers truly capable of competing at the NBA level will always be one fast break away from a career-ending injury, with few, if any, marketable skills to fall back on. The vast majority of them lack the life experience necessary to cope with the off-the-court demands of being a professional athlete. Think back to when you were 18 years old. What did you know about income taxes? Credit card interest rates? Paying bills? Had you learned to balance a checkbook--or did you even have a bank account yet? The combination of financial illiteracy and sudden wealth makes these young men ripe for exploitation. As the saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted.

And what of the thousands of black boys who will decide they don't need to take education seriously because they have been convinced--by friends, family, coaches, handlers, groupies, and others who see a 6'9" eighth grader with a 40-inch vertical leap as their winning lottery ticket--that they are destined for NBA stardom? Why bother taking the challenging courses--foreign languages, algebra, physics--necessary to qualify for play at a Division I college? Why worry about excelling in high school, or even in middle school?

How many generations of black youth are we willing to hoodwink in order to find the next, LeBron James? How many undereducated, unemployable, and disillusioned young black men must we create, and then discard, in order to produce a high school athlete who can generate billions of dollars for athletic apparel marketers, television executives, and team owners--the vast majority of whom are college educated? The reality is that past and present teen phenoms such as James and Garnett, Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, and Major League Soccer's Freddy Adu, are the exceptions that prove the rule that the odds of achieving the riches and fame of professional sports stardom are astronomical. There's nothing wrong with an athletically gifted youth aspiring to a professional sports career. However, it is irresponsible to the point of economic genocide to make it acceptable to bypass academic achievement and educational opportunities to do so.