I always heard that the statistical chances of making a DI roster was low, but, dang…
In my nearly ten years of coaching football I only had two athletes that made it to DI, and one made it to the pros. Of the two, one of them was a complete surprise, developing from a pudgy 8th grader into a guard that played for Air Force. The other went to Ole Miss and UTSA and eventually bounced around the league through Baltimore, Cleveland, New York, and is with the CFL now. That was not a surprise. He was a 7th grade aged athlete playing on our 8th grade team, having been skipped a year because he was also brilliant. As a 13 year old playing with 14 year olds, he stood at 6’3″ and was a solid 225. And he would only get bigger.
Needless to say, there were lots of other talented young men I coached, but few got past high school for a variety of reasons, even if they were good high school athletes and students.
I don’t think many of them languish around their houses nowadays thinking about winning State. None of them seemed like football was their everything, but I’m sure some still pine for the days of competition. Maybe it’s the generation. Gen Xers and older maybe hang on to it a little more than the younger crowd nowadays, more prone to what’s flashy now and what’s the new craze that can make them instantly famous.
Hell, our generations had an anthem for it, literally:
So for today’s Fodder…do you miss the “Glory Days”? What did you play in high school or maybe even college…and do you wished you could’ve advanced higher in the sport that you played?
Happy Friday.
I stopped playing football in the 8th grade after getting run over by a 9th grader in a scrimmage who ended up playing at FSU and the NFL.
I would have loved to have attempted to walk on the UGA golf team back in the day, but in those days, I had zero consistency with the driver and was not a great green reader (although I was pretty good through the rest of the bag). Therefore, there was no way I could have made the team.
If bass fishing was an organized sport in 1990 I would have a different career path.
As far as D1 athletes, there is a genetic ceiling that keeps 95% of us from getting there. It’s sad to watch all the travel ball parents dump piles of cash into a kid that ain’t got the genetics.
But they have pretty bats and seventeen pairs of sliding gloves. My buddy coaches his son who is 9 and their team prohibits all the flair. Good on them.
I was shocked when I recently met a guy at a bar and told me he was the fishing coach at a local (really big) high school. I knew it existed in some colleges, but high school too? I guess whatever it takes to keep the kids off the drugs.
Fishing is a lot bigger than you would think. Montevallo University, a small liberal arts school just south of Birmingham, is a national power in the sport. And no, I’m not making that up. They pull kids in from all over the place who want to be on their fishing team.
I always laughed at the Springsteen pitching in that video when I saw it growing up. That dude never played baseball. Or if he did, he had terrible coaching. LOL
That’s what I was thinking. He couldn’t have pitched on my little league team.
I wanted to play TB at UGA, (FB would have been fine too), but at 5’8” 130 at 15… well, I couldn’t get Vince’s attention.
So I switched to CC/Track and worked (obsessed?) at that to fulfill an ambition to participate in D1 sports. Made it. Ran one season, was 3rd on the team as a freshman, was then invited by the administration not to return to school due to grossly meager academic achievement.
That was the end of my (official) athletic career as I had to reorder my priorities.
I should note that I was 10-1 as a flag football qb in Myers quad and batted around .900 in quad softball as the lead off batter which consisted entirely of dribbling it to 3rd and beating the throw. I was fast! Fielded about .000 in RF tho. Not really my game…
Not long after that I was heavier than any fullback we ever had in the 1980’s….
Don’t say God has no sense of humor.
Similar to my journey, had a few discussions with a few coaches to play football at smaller schools. Was UGA or nothing in my mind, but 5-10/170 free safety wasn’t what team was looking for in early 2k. Walked on the track team for a season instead. Was a fun and then you’re in the blocks beside a future Olympic gold medalists and you realize your lot in life quickly.
Also found that the deck at Sons on most evenings was way more fun than not. So there’s that.
Being competitive in state races at the AA level in HS vs. being a college runner is not the same. Huge, huge leap. Not sure people can comprehend the gap there, but its enormous.
But for the academic issues, I probably would have maintained that course and kept at it. The training and competition is quite addictive. However, washing out academically and reevaluating priorities was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I focused on what would matter later in life and was able to have a really good time as well.
I do wish I had the vanity to maintain some level of fitness tho. Once the competition was done, conditioning was as well.
Funny you should mention softball. I can recall playing Intramural softball and my position was always right field, I could hit like crazy but couldn’t field a ball to save my life, let alone catch a pop fly. My one memory from that time was playing a game against a softball team comprised mostly of Georgia offensive linemen. I think it was Adam Meadows, maybe, but when he came up to hit, he hit one so far that it cleared the railroad tracks by the field, cleared East Campus Road, and landed beyond the family housing across the street. Had similar experiences playing intramural basketball against a team that included Hines Ward, Corey Allen, and a few defensive linemen I can’t recall off hand. Needless to say it was a quick game and a bloodbath.
I always said that if you gave me the choice of digging in and facing Nolan Ryan and running a toss sweep vs UGA’s #1 defense, I’m lining up in the I.
Doesn’t make sense but for some reason I always felt more in control being chased by 11 guys than having that ball launched at me at 100 mph. I knew in t-ball at 6-7 years old that it wasn’t for me. That fucking ball moves too fast and it hurts when it hits you.
I had a similar reaction to HS wrestling. “They grab each other where? There!? Nope. Not happening.”
So I stuck with football until the liabilities of my slight frame became just too much to overcome.
I played on an intramural team with Garrison Hearst. His calves were bigger than my thighs.
Went to a really small school, so if you didn’t play there was a real reason there might not be a team. I think I was pretty good based on the all-region trophies in the attic- football, basketball, baseball, tennis-, but definitely the product of a smaller environment.
Having said that, when I was 16 I got a phone call to play on one of the American Legion teams in the Atlanta area. I learned a few weeks into the season that I had pretty much peaked and better pay more attention to the books! When professional athletes are asked what the biggest difference is when you move up a level, the number one answer is how everything is faster. It was true at that level too.
I’m not sure what the dollar amount I’d pay for one more season of HS football is, but it’s almost certainly way more than it should be for any sane adult. I wasn’t fully grown until my senior year, so I feel like I got shortchanged by the puberty lottery a little.
I kicked around the idea of trying to play D3 football but ultimately decided to go to Georgia as a regular student. Don’t regret that whatsoever. I do kinda wish I’d at least tried rugby while I was in school.
I love wrestling and I’m helping to grow and build the program at our local HS by coaching the youth program, but I can’t say I feel the same way about wanting another HS wrestling season. I pretty much did what I could do unless I had started at a younger age.
Good subject. I was a four sport athlete until my tenth grade year when I decided to focus solely on football. I wish I had kept playing everything because not long after that the idea of playing football in college didnt seem nearly as appealing. I had a chance to play at some small colleges, Middle Georgia was one, there was another in Tennessee. By the time I had played my last game I was ready to be done. Brooks Austin talked about this one time last year. He said hes not one of those former football players who wishes he could do it just one more time. He loved playing and still loves football but when he was done he was done. Thats me exactly.
That’s a great perspective, Mike.
I saw someone recently put out a thing (maybe it was Terrence Edwards or Ben Watson, someone actually reputable) who said you should encourage your kids and yourself to not specialize in one sport but enjoy them all and be an athlete, if you are one. Interesting perspective. Most of my football athletes were basketball athletes and ran track, and if they didn’t want to run track I encouraged them to do so. Some of them found they really enjoyed it.
TE definitely said that.
There’s a lot of pressure to specialize these days. If you aren’t Deion or Bo, you don’t have the cache to tell the football coach:
“I’m playing baseball. Fuck your spring practice.”
That attitude robs a lot of kids of a lot of fun imo and its a shame.
The pendulum is actually swinging the other way in a lot of cases now. There are still coaches that force the choice on kids, but many of them will tell you “you’re either playing another sport or you’re working out and focusing on my sport, your choice.” The more we understand overuse injuries the more I think folks are realizing that time off is actually a positive.
You can specialize and make marginal gains above your athletic ability. But once you get to that next level, it’s not going to matter. The kid that was a superstar in 3 spots is going to get the spot over your good athlete that played baseball 11 months ago year.
Yep. My daughter loves softball, is pretty good, but also enjoys basketball, she is a cheerleader, and she took up soccer for the first time as a seventh grader last year. She says she’s adding track this year. I won a battle with myself recently. She’s a good softball player. Has been one of the four best players on any team she has ever played on. We did travel ball for one summer. I was becoming Thst softball dad. I didn’t think I was. I thought I was just giving her all the resources she needed to maximize her talent. Well last season in her first year of middle school ball I watched the joy disappear. She wasn’t having fun and she was not playing to her ability. I didn’t know what I was looking at because I was too wrapped up in my own wabts for her. Then it hit me. She wasn’t having fun burnt out. I left her alone and told her I would help her as little or as much as she wanted but really I just wanted her to have fun playing the game again. And I have seen the joy come back. She smiles playing again and looks forward to practice rather than dreading it.
I encouraged her to play soccer again this year even though I know Jack shit about soccer. Let your kids play whatever they want to play and let them decide how serious they want to be about it. It’s the only way it will work. Nothing ruins kids’ sports like grown people. I nearly became that dude. Now I sit way out behind the left field fence and am quiet as a church mouse just enjoying watching her enjoy it.
My wife played D1 basketball and I was a decent athlete myself though not at that level. I’m currently going through the ‘alphabet soup’ of youth soccer with my 12yo who lives the sport 24/7. She has my wife’s size (5’9″ at 12yo) and my ‘fear no one’ attitude and honestly is doing well and (trying not to be biased) can go as far as she wants. She plays 3 years up in age with her club and hangs with the 15yo just fine while playing on several other teams in the southeast. I’ll show her the chart with the percentages and tell her to keep pushing herself because making that level won’t be easy.
And the odds of reaching professional level are just miniscule. Here’s a quote pulled about the odds of reaching the Premier league soccer in the UK:
“The odds of a player reaching the Premier League senior team from a club academy are approximately 0.012%, meaning only about 180 out of 1.5 million boys playing organized youth football in England will ever play a single minute in the Premier League.”
My HS sports career in baseball and football was average and evaporated once I discovered beer and girls. What brought back memories in the Springsteen video was the pile driver. I worked on a pile driver crew at Columbia Nitrogen during the summer after freshman year, wrestling the steel piles into position. Brutal work in the heat. That’s what got me to focus on the books.
All American, Diving, UGA
For all the parents who think that little Johnny is going to the show in baseball, let this number sink in. As of July 18, 2026, a total of 22,764 individuals have played in Major League Baseball since 1876. Think of all the kids around the world who have played baseball in the last 150 years. The ones who were MLB quality could fit in a good-sized college basketball arena.
My sport was soccer – growing up in the 70’s there wasn’t much infrastructure here in the south and coaching was abysmal (I didn’t realize that until I was well into my adult years). I’m convinced that I could have been an average mls player making ok money had I been born 25 years later. Even in my mid to late 30’s local college teams would call for me to play in summer leagues with them. Still miss playing but don’t “pine” for those glory days
I played D1 football after walking on. Out of HS I was 5’6 125 pds. Joined the Marines and 4 years later was 5’10 and rock solid 185. Went to the desert and made my mind up after tangling with a T54 Tank, if I make it out alive I’m going to chase my dreams.
Actually went to camp in the NFL, before realizing my heart wasn’t in pro ball. Its extremely hard btw to make a pro roster.
I have to wonder what the % would look like if more schools had sports. Moreover I wonder if this takes into account non-NCAA schools.