Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, one of the NY Jets’ offensive linemen, graduated from medical school. He’s working on Master of Public Health degree at Harvard while he continues to play in the NFL.
He’s the 4th medical school graduate to play in the NFL. It’s rare but it happens.
John Urschel played in the NFL until he retired 5 years ago. While at Penn State (while playing football) he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics. After retiring from football he has worked on getting his PhD.
Not all players go to school just as an excuse to play high level football.
I knew a few people through work who played football for mid level schools and graduated with liberal arts degrees.
One guy was a starter at top school though. He went to Cal and got a business degree of some kind as was with me in one of my favorite work meetings ever. He was on the field during the famous play when the Stanford marching band took the field early. We were in a meeting with a long time client that we had known for years. Somehow the subject came up and it turned out that the client played trumpet for Stanford and was there too.
Our town growing up had a very good youth hockey program and a family friend was drafted his first year in college. He stayed at Yale playing collegate hockey for 4 years, finished his degree, and then played 9 season in the NHL (but never for the team that drafted him). After he finished his playing career he got his MBA at Harvard and went into finance. He’s a smart cookie, but I suspect that’s a fairly unusual career track for the NHL.
The most outstanding example must be Myron Rolle; or, more properly, Doctor Myron Rolle, who earned a Rhodes Scholarship while playing safety for Florida State. He spent a few years in the NFL, with the Titans and Steelers, never actually playing for either team, but then went to medical school at Florida State, and is currently a neurosurgical resident at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Frank Ryan was a star quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in the 1960s leading them to their last championship. He earned a PhD in Math from Rice in 1965, which was in the middle of he playing career. His dissertation was “Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc”. He was an assistant professor at Case Institute of Technology while playing for the Browns. After working for Congress, he became athletic director and lecturer in mathematics at Yale.
I understand what’s happening here, but these are exceptional cases. The vast majority of student athletes—in particular those receiving athletic scholarships—have no meaningful opportunities to earn meaningful degrees. And the vast majority are never going to play professionally.
You can find these little feel-good stories. But they basically function as lipstick on a very exploitative racket. It’s only now—a century into the system—that student athletes are getting even a modicum if a fair shake.
The reason they are notable is because they so rarely happen.
I will say though that although it’s rare for a student-athlete to get a doctorate, it’s not that rare for them to get a degree of some kind. (The most popular one seems to be “communications”, because if they are successful and become a household name, they already have the training in being a sportscaster or commentator.)
Arguably true in the big-money sports of football and basketball. But there are plenty of NCAA athletes in (relatively) niche sports like track and field, swimming, or golf who use their scholarships to get an education. I looked at a random handful of women on the University of Georgia’s track and field team. Two were studying Biology, one Biological Engineering, one Philosophy, one Business, one in Sports Journalism. One, a javelin thrower named Julia Harisay, is completing a master’s degree in International Policy, after graduating cum laude from Princeton with a degree in Public and International Affairs, with a certificate in Environmental Studies. There were a handful majoring in Sports Management, Health and Physical Education, or Business, which could warrant a raised eyebrow, but it’s clear that if an athlete wants to get an education, she has the opportunity. FWIW, in Spring 2022, fourteen Georgia teams had an average GPA over 3.0; the top being the women’s cross country, at 3.62, followed by women’s tennis at 3.48 , and women’s swimming at 3.46.
Just for fun I looked up the junior phenom Katelyn Tuohy, who won the 2022 NCAA women’s cross country and outdoor 5,000 meter championships. She’s maintaining a 4.0 in Business Administration at North Carolina State.
I guess it depends on what your personal definition of “meaningful degree” is. It may leave out most college students.
I just looked up my local school which is Rutgers University. RU has a graduation success rate of 92 for all members of their athletic department. That means that 92% of all athletes graduate within 6 years.
Shad Khan paid $770 million for the Jaguars in 2011 dollars, and I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone who thinks the team has appreciated by more than inflation since. To be fair, they are probably among the least valuable franchises.
As of last August, Forbes’ annual valuation of NFL franchises placed an estimated value of the Jaguars at $3.475 billion, so they beat inflation by quite a bit. That said, you are correct, they’re ranked #28 of the 32 franchises.
Just in case one is curious as to whether Forbes’ valuations are anywhere close to reality, in that report, they valued the Washington Commanders at $5.6 billion. This past April, Commanders owner Dan Snyder accepted an offer from a new membership group to buy the team from him for $6 billion, so that’s pretty close.