(ThyBlackMan.com) It’s no secret when a young black boy these days is asked what he wants to do or who he wants to be when he grows up, many of them would say things like I wanna be “The Next Lebron James or Calvin Johnson” or “I always dreamed of playing in The NFL“.
The issue with young black men who have that mindset is for every 1 Lebron James or Calvin Johnson, there are a 1,000 other young black men in line that want to become “The Next Lebron James or Calvin Johnson“.
An example of this mental brainwashing mindset is back 10 years ago when ex-Texas QB Vince Young, who was at his peak back then, said on the cover of ESPN Magazine, “I was born to play QB at The University of Texas”. I felt so sorry for him because he could’ve 
been anything else in life, but he was brainwashed to believe that his sole purpose in life is to be an asset for Texas & not the black community. That comment personally disgusted me because he was born to do so much more.
When I was a kid growing up during my elementary school days, I was often involved in extracurricular activities at PE like playing kickball (my favorite sport) to playing flag football.
But any sort of aspiration I had of playing sports had immediately came to an end when I got to middle school & it didn’t work out because I wasn’t good enough to pursue a career at the middle school level. And I’m actually glad that it didn’t work out.
Another harm of The Sports Lottery has on young black men is that it causes many of them to single-mindedly pursue it at the exclusion of academic interests & goals & see it as the only way “to get their mamas out of the hood” & that mindset alone is very dangerous to themselves.
There is also a very harmful culture that comes with sports like drug & alcohol abuse, sexual & financial irresponsibly, making bad decisions that could get inner city athletes arrested or killed.
Half of black athletes that are making millions for big universities like Alabama & Kentucky don’t even graduate or drop out of college and many of them are severely uneducated & it’s not by accident, it’s by systemic design.
And they put their bodies on the line for these big universities only to be compensated with a mere scholarship & are not even allowed to profit off their own autograph, image, & likeness & if they do, they will be severely punished by The NCAA that their careers will be destroyed by them.
The most notorious example of this tyranny of The NCAA is Reggie Bush, who made millions of dollars for Southern Cal during his three year tenure there from 2003-2005 & won 2 national titles for that university in college football.
It was reported that a “sports marketer” had given his mother 280 G’s aka $280,000 under the table and when The NCAA found out about it, they stripped Reggie Bush of his 2005 Heisman Trophy, made Southern Cal vacate all their wins from the 2005 season which ended with a loss to Texas in the college football national title game, loss of many athletic scholarships, & was banned from postseason play.
The Conclusion – We should teach our sons that there are more easier paths to opportunities like lawyer or entrepreneur than it is to be an athlete.
Staff Writer; Joe Davis
FB Page; http://www.facebook.com/joe.davis.165470
