The University of Texas at Austin has announced a new sports leadership program called The Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation. This first-of-its kind initiative comes amid headline-grabbing stories of deflated footballs, sexual assault accusations, and domestic violence occurrences among collegiate and professional football players. Goals of the program include teaching athletes how to build good character in order to be better role models and helping coaches identify and correct troubling behavior. The program kicks off later this year.
I commend UT Austin for launching this important initiative. Through the program, athletes will be better equipped with important life skills applicable during and after their professional careers. It will also give coaches tools to deal with problematic behavior in young athletes. Additionally, the Center will promote academic research on sports leadership, character development, and health awareness. This goes above and beyond what typical programs offer student athletes and their coaches today.
The UT Austin program is also a major step toward helping athletes achieve academic success and will require athletes to take a course on personal finance management too. The classes stress the importance of higher education, financial responsibility, and personal accountability.
I am thrilled to see that they recognize how imperative it is that student athletes learn how to handle their personal finances as well as plan for their future. After all, navigating the real world off the field can be overwhelming, especially if they don’t know how to manage their money. Careers in football, or any professional sport, don’t last forever but the money earned from these sports can. Whether they earn four figures or eight, if athletes are taught how to handle, invest, and save their money, they are a lot less likely to squander it.
There is a growing trend of high school football players committing to colleges earlier than ever. These days, more than half of the top recruits make an oral commitment to a team as early as their junior year. And with today’s unprecedented social media usage, there’s another layer of scrutiny and visibility given to young athletes adding to their superstar status. Teaching honesty along with respect for themselves and women is a great way to prepare them for life off the field and after school.
Sports used to be a way to teach young people about teamwork and sportsmanship and how to translate those principles into one’s daily life. But when some of the biggest names in sports make front-page news, not for their athletic accomplishments but for accusations of very bad behavior, learning those lessons gets a lot more difficult.
I am optimistic that the groundbreaking effort at University of Texas at Austin will be a great way to help athletes become successful, productive members of society and will pay huge dividends as they enter the fields of their choice, whether in professional sports or elsewhere.