20 Secrets to Success for NCAA Student-Athletes

Rick Burton, Jake Hirshman, Norm O'Reilly, Andy Dolich, Heather Lawrence

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780821447505
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

The premier NCAA student-athlete handbook, now in a second, updated edition designed for today's competitive market and with a new chapter on name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights.

Few student-athletes dreaming of athletic stardom ever make it to the pros. Yet, the discipline and skills they've developed while balancing a sport and academics make them ideally suited for satisfying careers elsewhere.

The book's authors draw on personal experience, interviews, expert opinion, and industry data to provide a game plan for student-athletes to help them transition from high school to college, navigate evolving rules about NIL rights, and find success in life after college.

Modeled after Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this expanded and updated guide provides a much-needed strategy for student-athletes as they prepare for postcollege careers, while serving as a valuable resource for their parents, coaches, and sports administrators across the country.

Secret 1

Create and Follow Your Student-Athlete Plan

THE SECRET IN A FEW WORDS

There is an old saying that failing to plan is planning to fail. Sure, it’s a simple twist on a few words, but the second part of the saying is where the big outcome rests. No plan means you fail. For many that word “plan” is probably mysterious or simply a hassle. Most of us remember in elementary school having to produce an outline that used roman numerals, capital letters, and arabic numerals. Many of us thought it was stupid to be forced to outline a report on birds or the state of Tennessee. Why couldn’t we just start writing the report? The reason was that “the plan” (that is, the outline) would make writing the story so much easier. For student-athletes, the creation of a plan, simple or otherwise, is a massive determinant in achieving post–athletic career success.

CREATE AND FOLLOW YOUR STUDENT-ATHLETE PLAN

When we asked Oliver Luck, former Executive Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at the NCAA, about career planning for a student-athlete, he succinctly said, “The backup plan is going pro in your sport.” Yes, a leader of the NCAA who played in the NFL is suggesting that a career in pro sports is Plan B. Plan A is your life path based on your academic choices.

Steve Cobb, who was the Director of the Arizona Fall League from 1993 to 2018, said, “It is important to have a plan as an athlete, a roadmap. If you don’t have a plan, you aren’t going to get to where you want to be. And you can have the best game plan of anyone, but if you don’t have the right people supporting you or around you, your plan won’t be as effective.”

Wise words from these two executives are ones to take to heart, and an indication that you should probably start your plan now.

Most young adults arriving on a college campus as recruited student-athletes (or walk-ons) have both specific and vague goals. And the source of these goals has likely come from life experiences, role models, parents, or peers. Commonly held objectives for freshman student-athletes entering college include the following:

List No. 1

1. Impress the coaching staff and earn “playing time.”

2. Beat out others on the team and emerge as a “starter.”

3. Take advantage of the university’s training facilities to help achieve Goals 1 and 2.

4. Make new friends and settle into college life.

5. Figure out how to balance athletics with academics and a social life and eventually graduate.

6. Make sure to take care of mental health and consistently make good decisions on sleep, food, socializing, and interpersonal relationships.

Unfortunately, for most student-athletes, there are several other desirable goals that never get stated or are formulated so vaguely that they don’t register until late in an athlete’s senior year. Those goals look a lot more like this:

List No. 2

1. Identify a professional work career that seems exciting and will sustain the lifestyle I want for the many years after I finish playing my sport.

2. Graduate in four or five years with a degree in a major that will enhance the procurement and enjoyment of my future professional career.

3. Graduate with honors or a GPA that will impress future employers or make admission to graduate, medical, or law school possible.

4. Take advantage of every single athletic department and university/college offering that makes me more accomplished and more functional for life after college.

5. Build an individual brand that resonates with teachers, administrators, the media, and future employers.

6. Join professional groups on campus or attend professional presentations that facilitate the development of a well-rounded individual and not “just” a “jock” or athlete.

7. Take advantage of the travel opportunities related to my sport and get to know the different cities and countries I might visit. Get out and explore.

ROB SMITH

(former student-athlete, now Head Baseball Coach at Ohio University)

I didn’t have a plan, and I was very misguided early on in the process. I had some struggles, and I didn’t really get things going until after my first year in school. I learned how to start prioritizing things like my academics, because the baseball wasn’t hard to prioritize.

I was also the first person in my family to graduate from college, so academics wasn’t a highly emphasized thing in our house, and I got buried early on because of that.

The plan component is probably more important than the goal-setting component because you can’t reach your goals without a plan. It’s important to understand what your tasks are and what needs to be done to execute them. As Herm Edwards, former NFL star, would say, “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” The plan is far more important than the goal.

If all you are concerned with is the endgame with no real process, then more often than not, you will fail. If you’re like the 99 percent of us who walk on the planet who can’t just show up and play, or have great skills without training as much, you must think about the process.

You already know which of the two lists above you naturally gravitated toward. And, granted, as a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old landing on a college campus for the first time (carrying the weight of an athletic scholarship and the pride of parents, guardians, or an entire “village”), the reason you were recruited as a student-athlete was because of your athletic skill. So, logically, it makes sense to “stick to what got you here.”

But here’s what makes that natural inclination to simplify tricky. Media coverage of student-athletes around you will reveal many starters or prized recruits who believe they will go pro in their sport. Since they believe they will go to the NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, LPGA, PGA, WTA, the Olympics, the Paralympics, or the Pan American Games, their goals rarely go beyond numbers 1–3 in list 1. So their goal-setting is simple. Get noticed, get media coverage, get drafted/selected. And the faster the better.

But here’s the biggest secret of all that we’ll keep repeating in this book: 99 percent of all collegiate student-athletes will never play professionally or represent their country in the Olympic Games.¹ Yes, some will . . . and there is nothing wrong with keeping that particular dream alive . . . but if 100 percent believe they will play professionally and 99 percent will fail at that ambition, then a key secret for the 99 percent is to hedge your bet (even just a little) so you have a safety net for the day your ACL tears or the coaching staff starts taking playing time away from you. If trends hold, on average you have a good sixty-ish years to live after you stop playing a high-performance sport.

The idea of a safety net for college athletes is a well-supported idea based on previous research in the area.²

College (in general) covers four years, from late August of your freshman year to May or June of your senior year. That’s about 1,365 days between the day you arrive on campus and graduation. Call it approximately 195 weeks. If you are an elite athlete, you may train, practice, or compete in your sport during each of those weeks. But how much will you put into preparation for the week after you graduate and realize you aren’t going back to College Station (Texas), Collegeville (Minnesota), or State College (Pennsylvania) that next August?

This is where planning comes in. The building of the safety net. It is the effort you put into everything other than your sport. Sure, there are a lot of hours that will disappear. If you average eight hours of sleep for 1,325 days, you will lose 441 days (more than 14 months) sleeping. That’s right, 33 percent of your college career will be spent sleeping. Eating won’t take up another year but it will fill entire months when all the hours are added up.

And how about your sport? If you average four hours a day (every day) in pursuit of your goal of more playing time, you will lose close to 220 days. The bottom line? There is less time than you imagine available for establishing and actually accomplishing that “other” priority of postgraduation career success.

So how do you create a plan that lets you master this initial secret?

The very first thing to do is to really understand your schedule. Many around you will assume you are not disciplined enough to set a schedule that fits your long-term goals . . . or even the goals of your head coach. That’s why forces beyond your control will set practice times, conditioning times, eating times (training table), class times, study times (mandatory study hall), injury rehabilitation times, and sometimes even bedtimes.

All of a sudden, one thing missing in your calendar is free time. This is a hard realization for many and it often comes as a surprise to learn that one day you wake up and realize there is no time to hear a guest speaker on campus or to join a campus organization featuring a topic or profession that interests you. The choice has been made for you. Classes, practice, eat, study, sleep. Repeat for seasons on end.

This is not to say that you won’t have any free time at all . . . but free time is often not “free” and it is sometimes the hardest time to spend wisely. So, a part of this first secret is learning how to schedule your free time to plan and accomplish the bigger-picture goals you want to achieve.

One trick is developing lists of things you want to do or see. Lists are also fun because you can throw them away as soon as you make them or carry them around for years. Lists can be created in spare time, boring time, while eating, or, as some driven people do, as soon as your day starts. They can be “Must Do” lists or “Dreaming to Do” notations. Here are a few types of lists to consider:

• Places I Would Like to Visit on Vacation

• Places Where I Would Like to Live

• Dream Jobs

• Books I Would Like to Read

• People I Would Like to Meet

• Potential Mentors I Should Connect With

• Musical Acts I Want to See before I Am Thirty

• Ten Celebrities I Would Invite to Dinner

• Cars I Would Like to Fix Up and Own

• Hobbies I Would Like to Have

• Grad Schools I Would Consider Attending

• Meals I Would Eat if the Zombie Apocalypse Was Starting in One Week

• Locations Where I Could Outlast the Walking Dead Zombies

Your “Dream Jobs” consideration may be the last thing most readers would construct, but in reality, should probably be among the first. Instead, responses such as the ones below are something you may catch yourself saying . . .

• I don’t have a dream job. I’ve never thought about that.

• I want to own the Dallas Cowboys or get hired as the general manager of the New York Rangers.

• My dream job is to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword—Stan Wilcox
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• How to Use This Book
• Secret 1: Create and Follow Your Student-Athlete Plan
• Secret 2: Understand Who a Student-Athlete Is
• Secret 3: Learn What Name, Image, and Likeness Means for You
• Secret 4: Ride Your Success Wheel
• Secret 5: Acquire the Life Skills You Need to Succeed
• Secret 6: Be Balanced in Everything
• Secret 7: Make Smart Decisions on the Other Stuff
• Secret 8: Seek Support Everywhere
• Secret 9: Your Major Really Matters
• Secret 10: Take Nothing for Granted
• Secret 11: Manage Your Highs and Lows
• Secret 12: Face Reality in Sports and Life
• Secret 13: Mentally Move On as a Senior
• Secret 14: Identify Who You Are
• Secret 15: Find Your Other Passions in Life as You Prepare to Be a Sophomore
• Secret 16: Invest in Yourself, Your Health, and Your Future
• Secret 17: Activate Your Student-Athlete Advantage
• Secret 18: Create Your Brand
• Secret 19: Be Fiscally Smart
• Secret 20: Prepare for the Future by Tracking Trends
• The End—Your Road Map: It’s Not a Secret
• Afterword—Christopher J. Parker
• Appendix A—NCAA Student-Athlete Success Data
• Appendix B—Other Resources
• Appendix C—Contributors to the Book
• Appendix D—About the Authors
• Notes