Chapter 17: Career Development and The Student-Athlete

There are about 400,000 American undergraduate college and university students participating in intercollegiate athletics each year (United States General Accounting Office, 2001). Year after year, thousands of these college and university student-athletes dream about making it to the professional level and have been dreaming since high school. However, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) (2010b) reports that only 1.2 percent of NCAA male senior basketball players will get drafted by a National Basketball Association team. The NCAA (2010b) further reports that less than one in 100 of NCAA female senior basketball players will get drafted by the Women’s National Basketball Association. Only 5.7% of seniors playing football in high school will continue to play at the college level, while only 1.7 percent of NCAA senior football players will get drafted by a National Football League team (NCAA, 2010b). The statistics are consistent with non-revenue producing sports teams as well (NCAA, 2010b) and may suggest that many high school, college and university student-athletes will not often make their dream of reaching the professional level a reality. Furthermore, these alarming numbers give rise to questions regarding college student-athletes career development as “a number of intercollegiate athletes, particularly those in revenue-generating sports, lack a sense of career direction” (Petitpas & O’Brien, 2008, p. 133).