The ethnographic study on the life of drug dealers was especially fascinating to me. I saw the movie, New Jack City, and the one with Al Pacino, Traffic I believe, and was sold on the notion that drug dealing was very dangerous but very profitable. To find out that it was just another top down economic system make me both glad I never invested any time and definitely makes me way less envious of my high rollers friends from my youth.
The truth is that drug dealing is extremely violent with very few benefits and apparently, very little reward. Yet, it is powerful to think that this is indeed no different from the staggering statistical odds facing every student athlete, yet they works had to make it big in sports. To crunch a little numbers of my own, there are 119 Division 1A schools, for ease of mathematics; lets call it an even hundred. Each team is in a conference of which there are about 12 conferences; lets call it 10 for easy math. Each conference has a all conference team made up of 5 players for a total of 50 all conference athletes. The NBA drafts two rounds of about 56 players each year. In theory, there are only 9 spots available to jump into if you are not one of the top five players in your conference. These 9 spots are pursued by 100 times 12 players for a pool of some 1144 players on all the DI teams. Thus your chance is 1/1144 or a 0.7 percent chance of making it in the NBA draft. Now, remember that this is just division 1A, while there are players in division1AA, Division II, Junior colleges, and overseas players. All things taken into consideration, the total pie of 56 draft positions are being pursued by over 20,000 eligible student athletes each year, pushing the odds of making it to the NBA a 0.28 percent. And by the way, less than 60 percent of players drafted make it to the team’s opening day rooster….just so you know.
Yet, every morning, millions of dads and kids with aspirations hit the hardwood or neighborhood pavement with hoop dreams alive and visions of the big life in the NBA their primary engine. Who is to say that this their hoop efforts they are ridiculous?. I mean, it is no comparison to standing on a dangerous New York street corner for hours in the snow, while dodging the police, rivals and crack heads, but it is a horrendous commitment that typically lasts more than te years and ends in colossal shame and failure more than 99.72% of the time. Still, the young drug dealers and hoops dreamers like their odds. Go figure.
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2 comments:
Interesting comparison of the NBA draft and drug dealers, but I think that I prefer the colossal shame NBA hopefuls feel after failing, then ending up in jail or murdered any day haha. In drug dealing you encounter the scum of society, which means that you will deal with messed up situations no matter who you are, or how powerful you are. By hoping to be in the NBA you work hard, receiving plenty of healthy exercise and you learn lessons, such as discipline, that you can use in life. You can also use your athletic skill to allow you to go to top colleges, which means that if you do good, not only are you going to make millions, but you are going to receive an education, which are all benefits that anyone would prefer.
That was a very out of the blue comparison, but a good one none the less. One thing that you might want to think about is are these athletes buying steroids from the drug dealers? Also I found that it was crazy how much the drug dealing organization was like a corporation. The people at the top really have to know what they are doing to keep and organization like this running.
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