I really do appreciate everyone's comments here. As for my closing comment above, I was trying to seperate the math of college vs pro from the actual life experience between the two. My thought was - the bigger the check, the more cushion you have if you mess up a little - if you only get a $200K bonus, you basically have no money to put away in my example. Also, whether an 18 year old kid would thrive in the MiLB environment is a different discussion and one that needs to be had until the bonus gets really big (at some amount mom/dad can move with him). Some kids would actually enjoy taking long bus rides and eating PBJ as long as they got to play. On the other end, there are probably kids that would suffer life long setbacks if they went this route - something money cannot fix. I was trying to lay out just economics and not reality - sounds like it was not warmly received. Regardless, I did enjoy the discussion. Good luck to everyone.