Reading about the careers of college athletes left me to wonder. Only about 2% of all college athletes end up going pro. So what happens to those who don’t end up drafted?. I’ve read into this and found out that athletes that go to the more top schools who are also top sport schools, like Ann Arbor, Stanford, Duke, USC etc., take easier majors in case they’re bad academically or focus on their careermore, do they just complete those studies and do that, something they don’t even love. I doubt all of these people are some nepo babies that can get jobs immediately after graduation. Some might see that they’re probably not going to get drafted so they start focusing on their studies but what about those who hold on till the end?
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A regular job or coaching
A lot of them go back to school or take office jobs that hire everyone
Many of them become coaches
Remember that these are college students getting degrees, so a lot join the workforce like the rest of us.
Many of them get a job in sports, whether it’s on the business side, medical side, or in coaching. Literally anything.
Depends on your major but they just get jobs lol. No matter your major there are job descriptions you fit
Same thing any other college graduate does. Gets a job (hopefully) in their field of study, but with the added bonus of having played a varsity sport for their university which will ideally make them a more attractive candidate to alumni who are hiring.
Move in with their nephew and reminisce about how they used to be able to throw a pigskin a quarter mile, or how they could probably “throw a football over them mountains”
Get a communications degree and try to leverage their college career with some higher up alumni in a big company.
Some work NASCAR pit crews
Some go on to grad school or business school. Or just work. Businesses seem to live Former athletes good work ethic and leadership
Regular job.
Well my cousin was in a college sport and now he’s a real estate agent. My friend was also in college sports and now she’s a physical therapist.
They get a job like everyone else
There’s a Ford dealership with your name on it
Ultimately, if they don’t become professionals, they are still college students getting a degree.
While many may enter coaching or some sports-related field if they can, they generally enter the overall workforce as a person in their early 20’s with a college degree.
Get really into golf.
My sister was briefly married to an NFL player. He played for the Titans for 4 or 5 years. Now he’s a welder in Alaska.
One answer is they get the same sorts of jobs everyone else does. I mean about half of people who go to college don’t finish with a degree and the answer is going to vary widely.
That said, I think there is also a reality that big time sport boosters, especially for football (and men’s basketball to a lesser extent), like to hook up top non-pro athletes with jobs. A lot of these guys are car dealers and you’ll see some former jocks on the staff at dealerships.
And as others mentioned, you’ll see a lot of former athletes working hard to get into coaching. AAU, high school, college, semi pro, anything to stay around the game even if if it doesn’t pay enough to live off of necessarily.
Talk about the glory days
Not sure where you’re getting this idea that all athletes at top academic and athletic schools take easy majors, or that it requires being a “nepo baby” to get a regular job after graduation. The former is probably more likely to be true for those that ARE near certain to go pro because their degree doesn’t really matter. The starting QB at Michigan is probably far less concerned about what field he studies than the non starting volleyball player.
Most of the athletes to which you’re referring just end up getting normal jobs. I don’t quite understand the question bc the answer seems so painfully obvious.
Cops and coaches
Go to work like everyone else. Those athletes who don’t get a degree are foolish.
Former college baseball player here. I just realized I wasn’t good enough to play professional ball. So, finished my degree and work a normal desk job.
At this point, you’d never guess it unless you saw me swing a bat.
Most college athletes aren’t seriously trying to go pro. It’s something they do to pay for school, or just because they enjoy it. Remember, college athletes also include people at D3 schools, or people who play sports that don’t have professional options.
I have a good friend who was a D3 soccer player. She played professionally in Europe for a year, then went back to school and became a landscape architect.
They pivot. Some got related talent or skills in sports. Smartest ones pivot big, like going into finance or starting a business.
Sad part is when those just barely missing the cut got no Plan B and can’t even figure out life given all the time still young. Even worse are those getting some “sponsorship” and wasting it on drugs.
Same as every other college student. The vast majority of college athletes know there isn’t even a chance of them making professional sports their career because so many of them play sports outside of the big 4. So tons of athletes do take their college education seriously and choose majors that will help them get a job they think sounds cool. Then when they graduate, they apply to jobs and work their way up the ladder and whatnot just like everyone else.
It varies a lot but they are getting a degree in something. If they’re smart most of them are fully aware they aren’t going pro and will take their studies seriously enough to get the degree. And often college athletes have a minimum GPA requirement.
99% of College athletes don’t intend to go pro. The most likely to be able to go pro from college are football players, and even then it’s extraordinarily rare to be drafted. Most concentrate on their studies while being on the team.
A college athlete is in general a scholar-athlete. There are many jobs that actively recruit scholar-athletes because of their work ethic, teamwork, resilience etc–all the qualities necessary for being a strong scholar athlete at college. There are a few companies that literally hire only college athletes (with good grades).
My son played football for an Ivy. He never intended to go pro; neither did the vast majority of his team. They were however actively recruited by several agencies because being on a football team at an Ivy while getting a high GPA is a testimony to the qualities many companies need. You often have to wake at 6 am, workout every single day, do weights, often about 5 hours/day on top of your coursework. Plus travel over the weekend. So you also need to be able to organize your time and keep your health.
For non-Ivy Division 1, you’re on scholarship. If you fail out, you lose the scholarship. So that’s the incentive for the weaker students. If the students don’t have the incentive on their own, they won’t get pushed unless they’re a tippy top athlete. They would just quietly fail out.
The exceptions everyone hears of – the football players who take the easiest classes and barely pass – are just that: exceptions. Most college athletes do this for a) scholarships b) community and friends c) enjoyment (they love playing the sport) d) job prospects because it increases your chance of landing a great job as I’ve said above.
.Go into the work force?
I was a college athlete in a sport where you don’t go pro…… for the most part.
It really depends on the sport and how you define going pro. I know of college basketball players that did not get drafted in the NBA but have gone to Europe or Asia and played professionally overseas. Some football players will play in the CFL.
Most of them know well in advance the opportunities available to them and plan accordingly. They use the scholarship for a degree that they want to study. Some even take advantage of their redshirt year(s) and use the scholarship for help with advanced degrees.
There are of course others who are convinced that they will make it pro, don’t, and they fade into obscurity.
There is not a simple answer for this one as it varies wildly.
My fraternity brpthers son (whos actually like 2 years older than me) was captain of the university hockey team the year he graduated. Got a remote engineering job and plays semi pro hockey (they pay room and board)
A player on the 2005 national championship Texas longhorns taught at my high school
Jacoby Harris became a firefighter. Maurice Clarett became a grocery bagger.
They get a college degree and work a job like any other person.
They go to the real world. Majority of athletes do not go pro and even then, the careers are usually only a couple years. Sports always end and very few get the chance to pick the moment it does. Everyone ends up in the real world. For those who don’t finish their degrees, they may go back to school, but some just work normal 9-5s. Even going into coaching is a big gamble. Few end up making it in coaching.
Alot go into coaching, alot go into either sales or the back office parts of professional sports.
A lot work in sales or something public facing like sports radio, restaurants, car lots, real estate, or whatever that allow them to capitalize off of name recognition. Back at home, we even had a dentist. But really … whatever you want to do. And with the money coming from Name image and likeness now, if you’re able to capitalize on that but aren’t able to go professional, you have a nice starting point to start a business out of college.
get jobs????
Get a job! Same as other college grads
Minor league teams if you’re good but not good enough. Or a normal job like everyone else
My friend played college football while getting his business degree. He never had a desire to go pro and is now a logistics manager for fed ex freight
They get a job like everyone else.
They may use the degree they went to school for, or they may get a decent job that kind of plays on their celebrity status like Real Estate Agent or Car Salesman. They could also be journalists for the sport that they used to play… A lot of different stuff.
The sports scholarships at best offer a lucrative career. At worst, it’s a college education and they enter the workforce.
Same thing as college grads who weren’t athletes. Get a job.
They get a job. Hopefully they got a useful degree. If not just whatever they can get
I know quite a few former college football players. Top division at a perennial top 10 school. They are:
A corporate office manager, real estate agent x2, high school football coach x3, UPS store manager.
If 2% go pro, I’d guess that only 5-10% treat their respective sport like a full time job.
I played D3 football. We all knew it was the end of the line, so schooling / grades / internships etc all took priority over sports.
Most of the athletes I knew went into communications and became broadcasters, or majored in something athlete related like sports medicine.
At the time of this study, 66% of Fortune 500 CEOs were college athletes:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/imagery-coaching/202407/from-athlete-to-ceo-coincidence-or-blueprint
You can find politicians (eg President Gerald Ford and Senator Cory Booker both played division 1 football), scientists (eg 2020 nobel Physics laureate Andrea Ghez swam for MIT), actors (eg Sylvester Stallone played football at Miami), musicians (eg Garth Brooks was on the track and field team at University of Oklahoma), and pretty much any other job you can think of.
Get a job and try to survive just like the rest of us who work for a living
My brother is one of them. Technically he went pro but it was practice squad and he saw like 2 snaps in the game
Anyway! He’s a financial advisor and money manager for athletes now.
This is because my parents made sure education was first. They let him have his goals of going pro but were very honest about the chances and about how life can take it all away in a moment. Always have a plan B
Insurance sales.
Ed O’Bannon won a nationals championship as a member of the UCLA basketball team. Years later while selling cars (that’s what he was doing) he saw his image on the cover of a college basketball video game. He sued the NCAA for anti trust violations
They become insurance or furniture store salesmen.
They use athletics scholarship yo get cheaper college costs.
Generally only football and basketball have full scholarships. Other sports its very different where it’s only half scholarship or it civerscroom/ board only but not tuition or tuition only but not toom/ board
They get a degree for a job.
They get their degrees and get jobs. My fiancé and all 3 of his younger siblings played college sports and now they’re all working in their chosen fields. My fiancé did 2 years of semi pro soccer before he decided to just come home and use his civil engineering degree instead.
I played college sports in D3. Athletic scholarships aren’t allowed by the NCAA for any schools smaller than D2. There was never any intention of going pro. I was there for college, and got a good office job afterwards. I made lifelong friends from team sports. Some were in my wedding.
As you stated, the significant majority do not go pro, and I think most college athletes have no expectation of going pro. Totally depends, though.
Depends. Some get jobs like the rest of us, others do athletic training, some coach.
They have all sorts of different careers.
Not a direct answer to your question, as this concerns the 2nd career of a pro athlete: Alan Page, the great NFL D-lineman, took law classes while playing and recently retired from the Minnesota state Supreme Court.
Use their degree to get a job. College athletes have to go to classes and work toward a degree like every other student. In fact, it’s common for college athletics programs to have certain academic performance standards for their athletes. If you are flunking a bunch of your classes, they won’t let you play.
Most join a normal work force. Often with the degree they got in college. I played tennis in college. Got a teaching degree.
They just get regular jobs like anybody else.
Lots of people have jobs they don’t love. Athletes not good enough to go pro aren’t special in that way.
And lots of athletes get college scholarships for sports there is no hope of making a career out of (like volleyball). They go to school to get degrees and are happy they are good enough at a sport that someone else is willing to pay their tuition.
I didn’t go a school with a top sports program, so the athletes were like us but with different tasks occupying their schedules. I had work, they had practice or weightlifting or whatever, but the logistical coordination and the effort in the group projects was nothing out of the ordinary when we were able to get together. There wasn’t this perceived difference in social status.
I imagine they went on to do something in business or teaching because that’s mostly what our school produced.
A lot of them end up in racing as pit crew personnel as tire changers and fuelers.
A regular job.
Though former athletes (especially D1) are highly sought after candidates. They have a lot of highly transferable soft skills such as teamwork and communication, as well as being naturally competitive. Make for great leaders/sales people.
Source: my brother is former D1 basketball player and quickly moved up from a starting sales job to covering half the US with a team of 10 under him in <5 years.
My wife ran cross country in college who is in charge of a similarly sized territory for one of the top real estate companies in the world.
Both had their pick of the litter for jobs upon graduation.
I’ve known a few college athletes and none of them were under any illusion they were going pro….I mean maybe it was a dream, but they also knew it probably wasn’t really going to happen. Most of them get degrees in things that anyone else would. The guy who was the backup quarterback for our football team when I was in college is a lawyer and he became a sports agent. One of the wide receivers was getting an accounting degree like I was and he went into accounting. Another guy wanted a career in sports but he knew he wouldn’t go pro so he got a degree as an athletic trainer…the last I heard he was the head athletic trainer for one of the MLS soccer clubs. I know a guy I worked with at my old shop and he played for the university here and a couple of years in the NFL and he’s a probation officer.
Mostly they go on to do normal shit…they know the statistics. The one’s getting a degree in basket weaving or whatever are the ones who know they’re likely to go pro.
My cousin played college football, and had to quit after an injury. He still got a degree in finance and became a successful business owner
people really underestimate the career opportunities that big college athletics programs provide for athletes and non-athletes. a lot of the people you see working on the field or behind the scenes are students themselves.
Many work within the organization on some level since that is where their expertise is. A lot of networking goes into professional sports so these guys end up in adjacent fields sports medicine ect.
A lot end up in Some form of sales.
They get a regular job. Some end up in sports adjacent roles like coaching, sales or training.
My sister was a D1 player and knew it wasn’t career path so she got an MBA and now works in supply chain management for a large company.
A coach of mine knew crew wasn’t a career even though he was highly competitive. He builds boats now. He coaches on the side.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a higher than average number of them go into the military. The two basic qualifications for OCS are a college degree and physical fitness. In general they get jobs like everyone else.
Also 2% sounds way too high. Maybe 2% of college football or baseball players. Most college sports don’t have a real pro option.
Talk about how they could have gone pro
I know several that end up in a sales type of role. Growing up in Louisiana, oil & gas is huge and there are tons of companies selling services and/or equipment for the oil field. Send a former lsu football or baseball player out as your sales rep, and you’ve got an instant rapport with tons of the decision makers.
“Students first, athletes second” is the NCAA’s core philosophy on the matter.
Someone in my family was a D1 athlete on full scholarship. She immediately found sales, and now sales management. Sales is zero sum, just like athletics. You win or you lose. You lose more than you win, but you get up and work harder and never stop trying to win.
She made six-figures her first year out of college. She’s never not made at least that, and now in her late 30s she’s in mid-six. She was worth over $2 million at age 30. Now, she puts together teams and develops them more than makes calls, but she still has her own quotas to make too. She is a VERY good manager.
She didn’t go to an Ivy and didn’t have a 4.0. But she had grit and drive and her employer saw that right away. Athletics can be a gateway to a lot of things.
The vast majority of college athletes do not go pro, and as far as what they do, they get jobs. Sometimes that jobs may be sports related like coaching or they may become a physical trainer but usually they just get jobs. Hopefully they got a decent degree.
Most have some notoriety and if they don’t go pro, often go work in real estate, car salesman, or other sales roles. Some have trouble adapting but the smart ones know fairly early on if they have a chance at pro, and with a largely free education without loans can still do very well.
This is a pretty broad question. You have college athletes that are playing very popular college sports like NCAA basketball, football & maybe baseball that can eventually equate to $$$. But most college sports don’t lead to much or even have a pro league.
If you’re talking about the ones most people equate to $. I would say if they are smart they get a degree & go about life like everyone else. For a small % they might get into coaching or use the networking they’ve acquired to get a job in that sport in some way or another.
When my kids were in elementary school (around 2008 or so), the principal of the school was originally a linebacker for a college team. He ended up on an NFL team (Detroit) but only played one year, 1989.
Super nice guy. The kids loved him. He looked like a giant walking around the halls.
Become a cop, or alcoholic, or OD.
They use their college degree to get a job…like anyone else would.
Former D1 player here. I joined the workforce like everyone else. I’m actually in an industry where I use my degree.
As far as my connection to my sport, I always knew coaching wasn’t for me. But I’ve always been an official, even at a young age, so I’ve stuck with that. I officiate college, UPSL, MLS Next, and my local youth tournaments. I also still play in a “beer league” on Sundays.
I’m lucky that even though my true competitive playing days are almost 20 years behind me, I still have a love of the game that keeps me involved and wanting to be around the sport, even as I continue to climb up in my non-sport related career.
Some go play in other countries. Some go into coaching. Some work in athletics behind the scenes. Most just get regular jobs.
I was a college athlete with a physics major. I now own a coffee shop. 95%+ of college athletes aren’t trying for a career in their sport. It just helps monetarily speaking to play a sponsored sport.
Good ol’ Ann Arbor University. The Fighting Anns.
Also wanna add that it’s unfair to lump Stanford with USC because Stanford is actually hard to get into as an athlete (still easier academically than normal people) while USC will let anyone in if they’re good enough
Adding a bit more color to all the people saying “they just get regular jobs” — the type A, competitive personality types that play high-level college sports often thrive in sales roles, where confidence, charisma and drive are more important than any technical academic skills. Former athletes are overrepresented among the banking relationship managers and SaaS sales execs that I know.
Coach in lower ed, take out their frustrated ambitions on the students.
Source: Had three different P.E. teachers, all the same pattern
From my experience, most student athletes even in Division 1 know that they are not going pro from the beginning. So they are using their athletic scholarships as a way to get free education for their future jobs. I’ve personally known former college athletes who went on to become accountants, insurance salesmen, real estate agents, and many other things.
Ok there are a lot of things to cover here before any answer can really be given.
>Only about 2% of all college athletes end up going pro.
This is not just due to skill, but that there aren’t professional versions of all college sports. A former Sales manager of mine was a D1 volleyball player and a business partner was a D1 Lacrosse player. There is no men’s pro Volleyball league and pro lacrosse has an average salary of $28,000. not the kind of money to not work a job over. but a business degree from Syracuse, or an engineering degree from Boston college can do you well.
>I’ve read into this and found out that athletes that go to the more top schools who are also top sport schools, like Ann Arbor, Stanford, Duke, USC etc., take easier majors ….
While not untrue for the top1% of college recruits in major sports ( football, Basketball, sometimes baseball), the majority of college athletes are looking for free or nearly free degrees. At Stanford, for example Football players are overwhelmingly major in STS, while probably not the hardest major, not a joke either. Now extend that same thing to Harvard, or West Point or Navy.
The NCAA currently covers over 540,000 students, not close to 5400 are going to be successful (super high paid )pros. There are 77,000 football players. 1% will make the pros, but not in the biggest way.
Some go to college to play the sport, most play the sport to pay for college.
The ones who use the sport to pay for college get typical degrees and plan to get a non-sports job when they graduate.
The ones who use college to play the sport might end up coaching, or they might be the token former athlete at a realtor or car dealership to help close deals.
Gym teacher
Some turn successful college athletic and academic careers into successful work careers. They’re not much different than regular college students. But in my experience they tend to be better disciplined, better work teammates, and can work very well in groups with goals.
Some employers love hiring student-athletes who played for NCAA teams — most especially if it’s an NCAA Division 1 Team — (no one cares if you played for fun or if you played intramural sports) but some employers do like hiring student-athletes who played for well known college teams like those in the SEC or Big 10 Conferences; it’s because some employers believe that student-athlete are great multitaskers and they hire because of that plus the cultural capital associated with the college’s sports teams.
If you were and insist on putting it on your resume, you should put it in the extracurricular section, but some might argue that you should put it in the work experience section which I’ve seen many NCAA student-athletes do.
Although it’s a very classist and illogical practice, some employers look more favorably on student-athletes with limited internship experience in their chosen field; than they do on students who had to work part-time/full-time jobs unrelated to their chosen career path while attending college as full-time/part-time or non-traditional student but couldn’t get a decent internship early in their college studies or before graduating college. For example some of these people would look down on a senior year internship applicant or entry-level recent graduate applicant who worked in the hospitality industry and didn’t have a good-looking internship (off-campus at a well known employer) their freshman or sophomore year but elevate an applicant who was student-athlete who also neither had a good-looking internship if all else were equally (including their experience in the field they’re trying to enter or lack there of, their GPA if the job does require you to disclose it; and had the same major).
There’s levels to college athletics.
There’s people who are aiming for the pros, and if they don’t make it, they often end up coaching or working in the field of athletics.
There’s another tier of people who see athletics as a way to get out of college debt free or go to a better school. They probably still care about athletics, but they knew they needed a “real career” if you will. Most of them end up joining the workforce. This cohort of people often were more diligent as students, because they knew athletics were a path to career mobility.
There’s also a third cohort here. There’s a lot of college athletes that end up becoming local mini celebrities. This cohort, I’ve found often ends up in sales jobs. I’ve personally found a lot of them end up working as car salesman, owning local bars/restaurants, or things that are customer facing.
I used to work with a guy who played D1 hockey in college. After college he got a job as a door man (bouncer) at a night club. From there he moved up to supervisor, then manager of security. Then he moved into restaurant and nightclub management. By the time I met him, he was a regional director for the company, overseeing the operations of 6 restaurants.
I know another guy who used to play D1 football, and after that he decided that his true passion was cooking. He’s now an Executive Chef in NYC.
They enter the regular work force like the rest of us, many with college degrees, a few get into coaching by becoming grad assistants.
If you were good enough to be a star on your team and are known locally in the community, you can leverage that local fame in to a nice job, many times in sales. Since most of your local business professionals are going to be alumni, having the star receiver who caught the game winning TD in a mid major bowl game five years ago goes a long way when you’re trying to close a deal or schmoozing clients on the golf course.
I work out with a few people who fit that description. One is a nurse, two are Physical Therapists. All of their Bachelor’s degrees received while playing sports at SEC schools were in exercise science, and then they went to get other degrees after that. I met all of these people through CrossFit, which doesn’t surprise me at all. I’d imagine many people with that situation are still involved in some type of competitive fitness.
A very high percentage of students at top US universities and LACs are recruited athletes. At Harvard for instance about 12% of students are recruited athletes. They go on to have similar levels of success in their chosen fields as non-athlete students at those schools
I only know a handful of former college athletes, so this is mostly anecdotal. I know some who got jobs in sales-related fields, including two who became insurance agents and one who became a financial advisor, and the rest went into teaching/coaching.
I doubt that many college athletes actually expect to go pro, and plan their lives accordingly.
The ones that know they aren’t going pro don’t have bs majors.
Get a normal job
My husband played baseball at University of Texas. He got a sociology degree… so yeah he falls into this category. Playing/attending a huge school with a far reaching alumni network is great for networking! He works as a day trader at a firm with offices here where we live and NYC.
They get a job.
I know of 4 engineers at work that were college athletes. Football, 2 did track (a pole vaulter and a 1500-5k runner), and softball.
Never shut up about how they could’ve gone pro if it wasn’t for some minor inconvenience.
It depends a lot on the circumstances.
If someone wants to go pro but they don’t get drafted into the league of their choice, they might play for a semi-pro league in the US, or they might play in a league in another country, hoping to get noticed. This is for sports like baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. The “Big Four” of North American sports.
For people who do team sports that don’t have a pro league, college is pretty much the end of their athletic career.
For people who do individual sports that have established big-time international competition–think sports that are in the Olympics–they might try that. A lot of top track and field athletes and gymnasts and swimmers and such will compete in elite international competitions alongside their college career, and if they’re good enough, they’ll keep competing internationally.
i work in digital marketing, and never expected to have a career playing volleyball in the US. i played one season semi-pro season in the UK and could have moved to a low level pro league somewhere else in europe if i’d really wanted to.
my wife was a full scholarship athlete and got an engineering degree. you can defnitely compete at the highest level & graduate from a challenging program, but it takes a very impressive person.
most college sports dont even have real pro leagues in the US, and the volume of college athletes is massive compared to the roster spots.
What everyone else who isn’t a professional athlete is doing.
My former coworker played baseball in college. He’s now the varsity baseball coach at the local HS.
I dated a guy who went to college on a football scholarship. Used it to get his degree in business – now the head of Q&A for a major manufacturer.
A lot of the players in Bananaball played in college, minor and major leagues.
This is a arguement to keep these minor leagues attached to colleges. A tiny fraction go pro, many go into coaching, most take their degree and lack of student loans, and go start their careers. If they are close to pros, they might still keep the dream alive while working (like there was an nfl quarterback who had basically started a Wall Street job and left because an nfl team called him)
On my DIII swim team:
Three years ahead of me – an engineer and I don’t remember what the other guy did
Two years – computer science and a surgeon
One year- they quit after one year, empty year
My year – two engineers, one MD/PHD, and one lawyer
One year behind me – one doctor, one engineer, one physics PhD
Lots (like myself) just get regular jobs based on their field of study. There are some jobs see having a background in college sports as an asset. These include, but are not limited to: coaching, financial advisor, and sales.
Family friend played college baseball and then became a lawyer
Most athletes I know by the time of college know they aren’t going to go pro and instead making the use of the full ride and study something they’re interested in. I see a lot of business or medicine (especially sports medicine) majors.
Former D1 scholarship athlete here. I’d like to know where the 2% go pro number comes from. I’d think the number is actually 0.2%. Most scholarship sports don’t even have a “pro league” to go into. I was Track and Field. Everyone on the team was there to get a degree, we all just happened to be good enough to get some $$$ in exchange for competing ina sport we loved.
Get regular jobs
The company that I work for hires a lot of college athletes.
Team oriented, but also are good individual contributors. Can follow direction and are open to coaching and critique. This isn’t 100%, but it tracks favorably.
I am in the engineering side of our business and having participated in team sports is definitely a plus on a resume. Typically we aren’t as introverted as the traditional engineer, so that helps when we interact with contractors and the business partners.
For hockey the sport I’m familiar with, players who don’t go pro will stay all four years and complete their schooling and join the workforce like everyone else or sometimes try stay involved in the sport by coaching or scouting etc.
Sometimes they do go pro in the lower levels and retire after several years and return to school to complete their degree.
Many of them end up getting a college education at a reduced price because of their athletic participation. That’s what they “do”.
Be average people that join the workforce and then go, “I almost went pro” the rest of their life
There isn’t any set track, but being a prominent college athlete gives you a lot of connections to explore. I’ve heard that a lot of CEOs are former college athletes for example.
The college athletes I’ve known have either coached high school or went back to school to be a lawyer or something.
All my ex athlete college friends work for NASCAR and they LOVE it.
They get jobs, just like the rest of college graduates.
They join company softball teams and play more aggressively than any other person out there. OR, they just play well and don’t have the need to be an asshole during games. The ones who just play well are much better teammates and coworkers.
I work as an environmental scientist consulting for water infrastructure. It was obvious even in high school that going pro wasn’t an option. But, I did NCAA for a bit for fun.
Hmmm…other things. Like everyone else.
A friend of the family has two sons that played college football. One is now a mid level insurance company manager. The other son is a cop.
My college volleyball playing neice is a physical therapist. Her basketball playing sister runs a lab for a public health company.
Just… other things
some of them are semi-famous in their hometowns and return there to leverage that by selling things, usually cars or insurance. Possibly not as common as it used to be.
My orthodontist played on the Alabama football team in the 1970s
Some get sports adjacent jobs but many go on to working clicky mouse jobs like the rest of us. Sales, project management, real estate, IT.
“they take an easier degree” sure, the easiest and also one of the most employable degrees is a business degree. So they end up in a bunch of random sales or whatever jobs.
They work at met life and sell life insurance
A lot of them go into sales. Worked in sales for three Fortune 500 companies and at two of them the National VP of sales were former Division 1 athletes. One played football and the other played baseball at well known schools.
At the regional level half my counterparts in sales or management had been a college athlete.
I got a job.
You do get a degree in something when graduate college.
These kids are Student Athletes ; the word STUDENT comes FIRST. You go to college to further your education, if you get a full ride and have some fun playing a sport you love, great. If it takes you further, that’s amazing. I think people often forget that these kids need to have education as their main focus. After all, they need to maintain a good academic standing to even play. Why not take advantage of the opportunity given and set yourself up for success whether you continue to play the game or not. I often feel bad for the ‘paper class’ days of some universities just getting kids eligible to be on the field and left them high and dry when it came to an education.
They get their degree, graduate, and start doing a job. How is this even a question?
they usually pivot to normal careers but the discipline from sports actually helps a lot. tons end up in sales, coaching, or business because they know how to work hard and handle pressure
They join the workforce. It’s pretty simple.
Many go into sales. Enterprise Rental Cars has a really good management pipeline for college athletes. Otherwise, they go into anything in real estate, insurance, car sales, even B2B/SaaS roles. They’re typically tall, conventionally attractive, confident, competitive, and tenacious. All qualities that makes sales so. much. easier. They either go back to their hometown as a legend or they leverage their alumni to land something with a firm in/near the college town.
They get a regular job and tell all of their coworkers about how they almost went pro, at least that’s what I’ve seen in my life.
most college athletes who aren’t good enough to get drafted just stay in college and get their degrees
The stat youre missing is that within 5 years, 80% of people don’t do a job related to their undergraduate degree at all, so it matters very little.
There are also plenty of folks who do college athletics fully expecting to not go pro, and not even wanting to go pro. But they get a free ride and a cool hobby with some status, so why not? College here is expensive and for a lot of folks, athletics are a vehicle to getting an education, not the end goal.
Also I am going to guess you are male, because while Title IV requires equality between men and womens sports in college, the amount of pro women’s leagues, events, and sponsorships available for women are vastly different, so they literally dont even have the option to go pro in the same way that say, a male football player does. It’s not even a consideration.
(I was a student athlete at University of Michigan and genuinely, none of us thought for one second we were doing anything other than having fun in college or thought wed ever make it as our full time job- even my teammates that went to the Olympics or were on national teams)