DI baseball-75 hour per week job

75 hours per week sounds a little low

I would say that in season that is not enough.

Interesting, thanks for the article.

I think that conducting a survey like this could be a slippery slope. Is the question including the mental time commitment of both the athletic and academic aspects of collegiate life? Or strictly the actual physical amount of time spent allotted to each aspect

Sometime during his sophomore year, my son turned to me and said, "Dad, I can't imagine how non-athletes fill up all their spare time." He had none. It's a huge commitment.

Whatever the hours are; The truth is that playing a sport in college is a "life decision".. in that it is a commitment that takes your whole current life's commitment.

I wonder what percentage of the 50% that trust the coach is starters and what percentage of the 50% that distrust the coach are not.

Prepster, my son has told me the same thing. He said me that he would be bored out of his skull without baseball when he looks at how regular students spend their free time.

Prepster- At my school, the student-athletes have a higher overall GPA than the rest of the student population.

In season, you can expect to be at the field minimum 4 hours before first pitch for team meal. The game on average is usually min. 3 hours, and then an hour to shower/ treatment/ice/change. That is 8 hours, for 5 x a week with the new Division 1 schedule, equaling 40 hours. Now, one of the remaining two days is your "off" day, but don't be suprised to see a voluntary mandatory hitting workout or bullpen. Also, you have to mix in a minimum of 2 hours of weights a week during season. Add in travel, and just the baseball alone is pushing 60.

When they were in elementery school they used to run home after school so they could play till dark, While in college they run over to the baseball field so they can play. This get's them ready for the real world.
Now that my son's playing days are over he works his 8 to 5 job and then goes over to the high school where he's the JV coach.
Fungo

Texted son several times the last 2 days with no answer- was kind of getting worried. Last text from him @ 10pm last night "U alright?". Responded immediately that he was in the gym @ 6:00 am for conditioning, then classes, then 4 on 1's with coach, home @ 6:30pm and fell asleep..........the beginning of the college season!

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Texted son several times the last 2 days with no answer- was kind of getting worried. Last text from him @ 10pm last night "U alright?". Responded immediately that he was in the gym @ 6:00 am for conditioning, then classes, then 4 on 1's with coach, home @ 6:30pm and fell asleep..........the beginning of the college season!

Sounds like their average day doesnt it.Lots of work to be done to get ready for season.Best of luck to your son this year CaBB.Hope he has an awesome season.

I am posting this as an alternative view of how hard our kids have it.

Son and I talk about the same things regarding if he didn't have baseball in college - how much free time he would have.

Son sometimes likes to reflect on his late Grandfather's life when he was this age. Grandpa was very busy too during his college age period. He was busy following Patton around to N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, Southern France and Germany. Grandpa used to tell him of the time in Sicily he went for 3 weeks without changing his underwear. Said that he always changed his socks, but had no time to change his shorts, they were too busy humping up to Palermo.

Makes me think of CPLZ's son and other sons who are going through the service acadamies, and all of the soldiers male and female that have given themselves for my freedom. My son considered that for a while, but Mom didn't want to let him go. So we all pause as often as possible and thank God for their service.

Whenever my son grouses about being tired from baseball and school, I remind him where else and what else he could be doing at this time.

Here is a short blurb on what one soldier in Iraq's day is like:

Typical day on the Ground by a simple soldier named Smith:

"We’ve been busy, busy, busy. Early mornings, long days, and hot weather (135F on Sunday) were my companions these past few days. We are now going on missions with the IA. They do raids with coalition forces help, and we watch them to make sure they don’t mess up. Our goal is to approve them as “ready to go on their own” so that coalition forces can leave the country to the Iraqi security forces. We performed around 4 raids these past few days, back to back. We searched around 12 villages, some as large as 8,000 people. We cordoned them off and searched each and every house. We found LOTS of stuff. I’m sure we have prevented countless deaths throughout the country. We blew up a cache of weapons the first day that consisted of a dozen RPG’s, over 200 mortar and rocket rounds, 3 AK47’s, thousands of rounds of ammo, Motorola radios for detonating IED’s, spools of wire, and other IED making materials. The next couple days were more of the same. I’m not sure how many people we detained, but it should have been a lot more. It’s tough with the IA because they will tell their buddies we are coming, and we find that a lot of terrorists are long gone by the time we get there. You know how quickly word spreads in small towns. We are working to rectify the situation though, so it won’t be a problem for long."

I don't mean to diminish the hard life of a college baseball player -- I just think it is a matter of perspective to help them get through it.

Very interesting post Backstop! God bless our men and women!!! Keep them and their families safe!!!!

I don't understand. Practices can't start until February 1, right?



But seriously, folks ...

I do tell our travel team guys, baseball is the toughest of all sports in terms of the time commitment required. The fact that the scholarships are only partial is a true case of adding insult to injury. You've got to love it to persist. And given that these are the years when many discover that the Peter Principle applies to baseball as well as to the business world, it's quite a lesson.

But our family is like that of Backstop. Midlo Son's grandfather spent his first 5 years out of high school swinging a pick in a coal mine to save money to start college. And those weren't any 8-hour shifts or 40-hour weeks! Our young men are very fortunate that they, through baseball, learn that they are capable of far more than most of their peers imagine is possible. Whether or not they make it in baseball, it's reassuring to know that they will enter their years as an independent adult with quite a leg up on their competition in the world.

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I don't mean to diminish the hard life of a college baseball player -- I just think it is a matter of perspective to help them get through it.

And people must remember that these players chose this lifestyle. Nobody forced them to go play college baseball.

I was not a college athlete, but I had the schedule of one with the exception that I never had an offseason. Through my education, I worked with athletes on a daily basis and believe it or not, we were there before the athletes got there and there after they left. For that privilege, we got to pay a TON of money.

I don't know what a "normal" college student does day-to-day. I found those days off to be extremely boring myself.

When players find things getting tough, they need to realize that while it may be hard work, there's literally hundreds who would love nothing more to take their place. Whether it's a college athlete or a professional athlete...

In no way is my son complaining about his schedule and how busy it is. These kids are LUCKY and privileged to be able to continue a way of life that they love. It may be hard but it's also the most fun they may ever have in their lives (until they have their own kids). With the economy the way it's been they should feel blessed to be able to work their butts off- look at the teams @ UC Berkeley- they most likely won't be given the chance to play next year.