Success as a Double-Edged Sword

Aaron Peirsol competed in three Olympics and won seven medals. He won three gold medals at the Athens Games in 2004, sweeping the backstroke events. In Beijing in 2008, he won the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke. As he says, “I’m a former swimmer who enjoyed what he did and got to do it for a long time.” He will be writing for the 2012 London blog throughout the Olympics. This is his third post.

Every generation of young athletes has a few with more options than most. For many in the United States, a scholarship is a gift, not just for the youth, but for the parents as well; it can be the paramount achievement of a young athlete. Only a very few have another option to consider, and it deserves a lot of consideration.

There are a few young athletes at these Olympic Games who, when they go home, will have the opportunity to turn professional, make a fine living and forgo a bid to enter into the N.C.A.A. system. This decision deserves a lot of debate, and I am not sure there is anything black or white about it. This deliberation should entail what is intended to be gained from one or the other, where the priorities lie.

In an ideal world, an athlete could accept money and participate in college sports. The Olympics once hid behind the veil of amateurism, and a few groundbreaking generations changed that. But that change has yet to happen in the N.C.A.A. system. For a select few, a decision must now be made.

At some point, there is an amount of money that for many may truly be hard to turn down. I believe the question of education can be dismissed because with the earned money, college can still be attended, although athletics does allow another route to better higher education.