Why do women's basketball players stay in school four years?

Plus, nobody is suggesting they leave early for the WNBA.

I don't understand why a Brittney Griner or Diana Taurasi type would bother with the WNBA. I really don't.

 

All I know is it's none of our goddamn business what Brittney Griner decides to do. There are plenty of rationally justifiable reasons for her to stay in college, and plenty for her not to. But she doesn't owe womenkind some debt to leave early if that's not what she wants. You're implying she's being a nut, and that's out of bounds.

Still pondering whether you think she's a house mammy or field mammy.

 

Oh, save it.

Stick to the debate.

 

Uh my sister played professional basketball in Europe for four years after college.

It is far from glamorous. If you don't know or learn the language you are in for a miserable time. If you don't have an American military base nearby, you are in for a miserable time.

The money is not especially fantastic but you do get some perks like an apartment, car and with the right deals groceries but I think a change has been made to the tax code and you have to pay the IRS for money made.

The perks system complicates things tax-wise plus you have a creepy factor involved.

Some of the team owners are weirdos with sex fetishes for tall women and other perversions.

I can think of a hundred reasons why players would want to hold off on the overseas experience.

 

Maybe things have changed since the 1990s. The professional basketball player I know said the money is definitely better than WNBA, but there's a lot of things most people don't realize and will never realize. Things like a $6-a-minute phone call back home. 24-hour trips to get to your next opponent. Getting to the train station to find out there was a bombing just a half-hour before they arrived.

Now, I have no doubt the players get free room and board and meals. But it's still a foreign country thousands of miles from home and light years from what you're used to in the states. Now, the player I know plays in Russia. Maybe it's better in some of the other Euro Leagues. If it was up to her, she'd quit playing overseas yesterday, but overseas is what pays the bill and will ultimately set her up for future business ventures in her life.

 

We've had this discussion ad nauseum on other threads.

What if she gets injured? And what about that year of earning that she'll never recoup?

Regardless, that's getting far afield here. We're not debating a specific athlete's decision here, necessarily, but the pattern within a sport as a whole. Men leave early. Why don't women?

 

I said it at the start of the thread. Women are finally realizing they can make their own way in the world and that the men are not the only ones who are allowed to go out and get college degrees.

In short, the women are smarter.

 

For sure. Same with Andrew Luck. But for every Andrew Luck, there are 10 guys who leave early. And when was the last top player in the men's game who stuck around for four years? The point is that Brittney Griner is the rule, not the exception. Why?

 

I ask again: Do you think that a college degree will really have any impact on Brittney Griner's future employment prospects?

 

I think we've shown you ad nauseum that it's economic apples and oranges. U.S. women's sports pays less than the type of jobs a college degree gets a woman. And most Americans would rather stay in America.

 

Because the money isn't good enough.

In all these discussions across the sports, you seem to have taken "they should be free to leave early" to the extreme of "why the fuck don't they leave early?" I think you had a problem with Andrew Luck sticking around another year too.

 

I think that this is a fair point that I would want to know more about.

Wouldn't be shocked, though, to hear that some of these horror stories are being circulated by the masters, er, women's college basketball coaches.