Mike: UW’s quarterback should declare for the NFL draft ASAP
Nov 16, 2019, 10:27 PM | Updated: Oct 1, 2024, 11:14 am
UW quarterback Jacob Eason. (Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Let me show you a paragraph from today’s Seattle Times:
But by returning to the Huskies for one more season, the Lake Stevens native can not only improve his draft stock, he can create the legacy at UW that eluded him in 2019. Eason is just a guy right now, but if he returns, he can leave as the man.
This is a story about Jacob Eason, the uber-talented Huskies quarterback who is an NFL prospect. The author, Seattle Times sports columnist Matt Calkins, makes an argument why the young man should walk away from millions of dollars and straight into your ambitions for the UDub’s 2020 football season.
It’s not just a lousy idea; It runs counter to what we should be telling this young man. If he were in the computer science department, if he were a singer, and someone offered him $10 million dollars to ply his career before getting his degree, what would we say?
Walk away from generational wealth so you can entertain fans – who can’t legally pay you – for another year and risk your financial security? For a legacy that matters most to the people who didn’t even create it?
And why is it that are people who don’t create legacies always so want to be in charge of other people’s?
Does Jacob Eason owe them anything?
No.
If the NFL and NCAA insist on treating college football like a business – in other words like it billion-dollar, free-labor minor league – then NFL-grade athletes in the system should take that lesson from their elders and treat it in a similar fashion.
Two of the richest men in the country – Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – dropped out of school when an opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
Does anyone whine about what they owe the fans of both schools? Does anyone think about their collegiate legacies?
Exactly. Go grab the money, Jacob. And if it doesn’t work out in the pros use one sixtieth of that first-round dough to get yourself some schooling wherever you choose.
Or just live off the interest. Not the fan’s interest, which is what the legacy police argue. The money’s interest.
That’s interest you can actually bank on.
Tell me I’m wrong.
