

CO Coach
RE: 1:47.67 HSer Josh Hoey turns pro - Thoughts?
The elephant in the room with men's college sports is the dropping enrollment of men in college. As of 2015 the percentage of men at US colleges was 44%:

In another decade or two we could be looking at enrollment numbers for men as low as 30% if something isn't done to reverse the trend. The combination of football, title IX and dropping male enrollment will result in the slow strangulation of non-revenue men's sports, it's already been happening for years, the writing was on the wall when it became an NCAA rule that men's track was only allowed 12.5 scholarships and women were allowed 18 in D1.

The fact that it's highly unlikely that even a star high school athlete like Josh Hoey can land a full scholarship makes the math on turning pro even simpler for these young athletes and their families. But Josh got lucky, for every one of him there are hundreds of talented young men with no prospect of a scholarship or even the opportunity to compete. If the track and field community in the US was smart we would start to take a careful look at alternative opportunities for our young athletes when they graduate high school, we can't rely on the collegiate system to develop our talented young men anymore.

