When speaking on the College Athletics Recruiting process, I will sometimes have parents come up to me after the presentation and say something along the lines of, “Well, my child may not play their sport in College so that they can focus totally on Academics.” They are concerned that playing a Sport will take too much time and will cost them in the classroom.
NCSA Speaker Charlie Adams
I understand where they are coming from, but in today’s world I ask them to reconsider. In the hundreds of Talks I have delivered on Recruiting, I have had countless Company Owners and Business Leaders come up to me afterwards and say, “I tell my H.R. people to be on the look out for that resume from that College athlete from a respected school that has a solid to strong GPA.”
For almost a quarter of a century, I interviewed thousands of College and High School athletes as a sports anchor across America. I tell people the most impressive was Vanessa Pruzinsky, and they often go, “Who is she?” Vanessa was an All Big East soccer player for the University of Notre Dame. They play at the highest level, with 3 National Championships in the past 15 years. It takes a major commitment of time and energy to play for them, yet during the time she was excelling on the soccer field, she also maintained a 4.0 GPA in Chemical Engineering all 4 years at Notre Dame.
When I say that, audiences often gasp. Many know how viciously hard Chemical Engineering is as a major.
She was the first student at Notre Dame since the 70’s to finish with a 4.0 in that brutal major and the 3rd in history, and certainly the first to do so while playing a sport. As a result, when she graduated, companies desperately competed to hire her. They knew they had a chance to bring someone in who was bright, incredibly disciplined, and who would help them immensely. She had her pick of all kinds of options.
Companies and organizations want and need the DNA of true College student-athletes in their culture. Notice I didn’t write College athletes but “true College student-athletes.” These young people bring the ability of time management with them. To be a true College student-athlete they HAVE to be able to manage time or they won’t make it. They also are fierce competitors. I was watching a documentary on University of Florida men’s basketball coach Billy Donovan and he recalled that when he graduated from Providence University being told to look into Wall Street “because they really like to hire College student-athletes because of how competitive they are.”
College student-athletes are leaders. They have overcome adversity. They understand team concepts. A football team requires all 11 players on the field to be in total unison to have success, and those 11 often come from totally different communities. At the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, there is a powerful presentation in their Stadium Theater where at the end Archie Manning narrates, “He may be from Brooklyn and I may be from the cotton fields of Mississippi, but there is a bond that brings us together…” Those athletes, when they go in the work force, are able to bond with their new teammates.
Former Notre Dame QB Terry Hanratty, who finished in the Top Ten of the Heisman race twice, once told Blue and Gold Illustrated that his success in the financial world in New York City came primarily because of being a College athlete. At quarterback, he had to make split second decisions, and then put them behind him – good or bad – and move on to the next play. That background helped him excel on the trading floor.
I was delivering a sports motivational and recruiting message for an audience at Purdue University Calumet and was standing in the Waiting Room with other speakers. Staff members at the University were also in the room, and several times a leader would come in and ask them to move chairs in a room or do something similar. In each case this young woman would bounce up, roll up her sleeves and be the first down the hall to do the job. When she came back I said to her, ‘You played College sports, didn’t you?” She looked at me in a surprised way and said, yes, she did. I told her that I could tell by how she initiated action and was such a team player. She told me she had played Volleyball at a D3 school in Illinois that, frankly, I had not heard of but she had all of the important measureables employers look for in someone that will move up the organizational ladder. She was about 23 at the time, which was several years ago. I bet she has moved up to a leadership position by now.
Being able to deal with the stress and pressure situations of 21st century work life is very important. As Coach Taylor says, College athletes have already been yelled at! That is a funny line but so many new employees that have not been in athletics are over sensitive to criticism or being in pressure situations, and struggle in the professional work field.
This isn’t to say non athletes can’t be successful, but I am basing these insights on all of the Company Leaders that have come up to me and told me there is a growing trend to hire true College student-athletes. If you have the ability to play your sport at any level in College and get a degree, strongly consider it. By doing so you are branded in a positive way for the next 40 years.
Practically gone are the days of the security of working with one company for 40 years and then getting a gold watch and plaque at retirement. In today’s world academic success is still very important, but having the competitive intangibles that come from playing field hockey, soccer, cross country, basketball, or any sport at the College level are in many ways just as important, if not more. The book Athletes Wanted by Chris Krause is a tremendous resource with extensive interviews of Company Leaders on why there is this growing trend to specifically hire College student-athletes. I encourage you to read that book to better understand how to put your child in position to play their sport at the right school and then be in position to be a leader in life.
So as you look forward, I urge you to reconsider going to College simply as a student. In a few years you don’t want to be at a disadvantage to that young person who also did well academically in College AND played a sport.
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Charlie Adams
cadams@ncsasports.org
(Editors Note: To bring Charlie Adams to educate your parents and athletes on the recruiting process, contact Alex Horton at ahorton@ncsasports.org)
student athletes across the country, hoping that in the last seconds their rival school didn’t steal their top recruits. Today, NCSA had the pleasure to watch as one student athlete finally make his dreams come true. Maurice Fleming came into NCSA Headquarters at 8 AM to sign and fax his National Letter of Intent to the Iowa Hawkeyes. He was surrounded by his biggest fans: his mom, his grandma, and his high school coach.
