Gerrit Cole decides not to sign with yankees and go to UCLA. http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/first-round-pick-gerrit-cole-opts-for-college-over-yankees/ Stupid move imo, his stock will probly never be higher. Can you say Lienart
You can always go to college. You can't always get $5 million dollars. If those mechanics aren't fixed in college, come draft time he might be getting surgery.
I hope the SOB tears his shoulder. For crying out loud he went to the 2001 WS with a sign Yankee Fan Today, Tomorrow, and forever. Check Nomaas! I wish bad things for this kid.
Ever occur to you that maybe he doesnt think hes ready for the life of a big leaguer? Show some class jgang, its not your decision or one that dramatically effects the Yankees.
When I say I wish him bad things I mean I hope he becomes a big bust. If I was drafted by the Yankees in the first round I would sign in a heart beat. I don't really blame him as much as Boras, and his father who put the college idea in his head.
Wait a minute. His father is a douchebag for encouraging his son to go to college? WTF is wrong with this country?
I disagree. My son wants nothing more than play baseball professionally. I have made it clear that he must complete school, then he can have a career if the cards fall that way. A sports career can be gone tomorrow. A college education is yours for life.
You can always go back to school when your past your playing days. And a signing bonus of a milion dollars or even 100,000 200,000 goes a long way to paying tuition if baseball dosent pan out.
very true, But imma play devils advocate here. So in the case of this young man, he could blow his career in the first year and still make 5 million, something it would take most people 40-50 years to make. Or maybe he wrecks his arm 4 years down the road. Whoops, whatever will he do with 20 million. Alio, I agree. I would want my son to have a college education before he decides to go pro. If he is that good out of high school, he will still be a good when he is out of college.
He is only going to go to college for one year or two years max. The Yankees would have gladly given him top pick cash. Scracth the whole getting injured thing I wish him a worse plight getting drafted by Cincinnati, or San Francisco.
A couple of economists have actually looked at this question (I know one of them - Jason Winfree at the University of Michigan). It's a hard problem, because you can only use old data - it's obviously impossible to know what someone's lifetime earnings will be until many years later. For what it's worth, their conclusion is that players drafted in the first ten or eleven rounds will have higher expected lifetime earnings if they sign than if they go to college. The expected gains are pretty small long before you get to the tenth round, but in the first three rounds they're pretty large. One reply to your point about a college education, of course, is that there is nothing that stops someone from going back to college after a few years if baseball doesn't work out, a million dollars or more richer.
Well, if the case is that he's only going to attend school for a semester or two, then it's clearly a stupid move on his part. I get the whole "you can go back to school" thing, but let's be honest, players don't do that. Ickey Woods played in a Super Bowl, yet was selling meat door to door mere years later. For me, education comes first. Sure, it'd be nice to make millions of dollars, but if something happens, and you never make those millions, you stand to spend the rest of your life regretting the choice. I applaud anyone who chooses school over sports. Again though, only if he's choosing to get his full education. If he's choosing to go for a brief period of time, he's stupid for not taking the money while it's there. You never know what's going to happen a year from now.
If he is choosing to only go for a semester or two then he is only doing it so as not to become a Yankee. There is no other possible reason. Obviously in baseball he could do that anyway and just re-enter the draft next year but that might tarnish his reputation. This way it doesn't.
