The College Advisory Committee told Malik Jefferson to stay in school for another year. After becoming a third-round pick of the Bengals, Jefferson is glad that he didn’t listen.
“It’s not really good feedback,” Jefferson said, via Max Olson of The Athletic. “If a guy wants to come out early, they have to make a decision on their own. Really, if you’re not like a top-10 guy coming out early, it’s just up in the air from there. You just don’t know. Anything can happen.”
Instead of continuing his education without being compensated for playing, Jefferson will now back up Nick Vigil and Vontaze Burfict with a contract worth $3.4MM over four years.
“You say stay in school, but a kid wants to better himself and his future,” Jefferson said. “So you can be making money for the university, struggling, trying to eat dining hall food, waking up early, having to go through extreme pressures and not getting paid for none of that. Or you can not go to school, just play football all day, study film and get better and work out all day and max yourself out.”
Jefferson may be happy with his choice, but in defense of the CAC, the Texas product probably anticipated going late in the first round or somewhere in the second when he declared for the draft.
Here’s more from the AFC:
- The Colts met with safeties Tre Boston and Kenny Vaccaro on Monday, but Stephen Holder of the Indy Star (on Twitter) hears that nothing is imminent with either player at this time. Boston and Vaccaro both offer significant starting experience, but the free agent market has been painfully slow to develop for them and other safeties this year.
- Jets linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis struck an agreement with Kansas prosecutors to have his drug-possession charge dropped if he completes one year of probation, as Rich Cimini of ESPN.com writes. While with the Chiefs in January, Pierre-Louis was charged with several misdemeanors, including marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. The Jets signed him to a two-year, $5.25MM deal this offseason.
- The Bills are taking a look at former Cowboys and Bucs defensive end Ryan Russell.
How much does an education at the University of Texas cost if you have the grades to get in? I know it’s tough to take classes, stay in top shape and, for 3-4 months, play football, all for a university degree that will stay with you the rest of your life. Life’s a real tough deal… Jefferson’s attitude says a lot about this guy…
There are a lot of people – students, parents, economists, public policy experts, journalists, pundits and educators – questioning the value of a four-year degree relative to the cost and the job market (and more than a few predictions of a coming crash in the student loan and college “bubbles”), and at least as many people questioning whether would-be professional athletes, some of whom might otherwise never have considered attending higher education (“Plumbing was my fallback profession, and you can make a good living as a plumber.”), should be risking their future earning potential working for a college or university under the legal fiction of being a student-athlete.
Head coaches can make millions of dollars a year, schools can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadiums and facilities, and the student-athletes who are generating all of this economic activity get to live like they’re work-study students, who generally do NOT risk their future earnings potential almost every time they are on the job (no practices, scrimmages or intense work-out sessions in the gym for me when I worked at my college book store, and I wasn’t planning on working a job where the health of my knees was an essential question, anyway).
Jefferson’s “attitude” says less about him than it does about the economics of college football (“Hey, coach, congratulations on the exclusive deal with Nike.” “Thanks, kid, now make sure you’re not accepting a dinner from any booster, or you could lose your scholarship.”) and the growing agitation for a college football players union.
Hell, if I were being cynical, I’d say I was surprised the kid didn’t say anything about buying a house for his mother.
I heard UT feeds football players very well. What’s he upset about? No Taco Bell?
Too many steaks?
“struggling, trying to eat dining hall food, waking up early, having to go through extreme pressures and not getting paid for none of that. ”
Wow, almost like a real college student, except he didn’t have to pay for the privilege of going through all of that so he had no incentive to try to get a degree.