O’HARA AND OTHER STAR ATHLETES SHOULD NOT LIMIT THEIR OPTIONS

For many of us money comes before all else. So when Calabar High School’s Michael O’Hara signed his deal with Digicel which he exposed to the world at Champs 2015, many of us jumped for joy. Yes! He did it! He parlayed his athletic talent into cold cash! We have become so obsessed with money in this country, we seem willing to take a little now over waiting for the real tranche later on in life. We have bought into the Pepsi tagline Live for Now. The only problem is, ‘now’ is only an instant. In the time it took me to write this sentence there were at least 60 ‘nows’, so what happens after that?

History is filled with examples of sportsmen and women who have gone broke because they have only depended on their athletic talent and nothing else. ‘Take the money now and run,’ people say. But what if in running the athlete blows out a knee; what then?

The O’Hara deal took on special significance when it was announced that he would not be able to represent Calabar at the ongoing Penn Relays. Again, the wagonists claimed Penns isn’t important. But the immediate response to that is if it wasn’t were so many high-profile lawyers pulled in to take the case the court in the US which eventually cleared the way for him to compete for Calabar?  It certainly seems like an awful lot to do for something that was not important? There is also now word on the street that the plug has been pulled on the deal.

The other thing that many of us overlook is that in signing the deal, O’Hara was reducing his options to only attending university here in Jamaica and while there is nothing wrong with that, what happens if he wants to pursue a different course of study or finds that the coaches at the university here he is attending are not working out for him?

Whereas the deal may not prevent him from getting a scholarship here in Jamaica it certainly will if he tries to get into an American college – where most of our track athletes end up- and where he could find a coach that would take him to that next level. He could always pay his way but he would never be able to compete which negates the point of his training. Why limit his options? The more avenues one has to pursue success the greater the chance of him achieving said success.

Look, let us not make this about two telecommunications companies going to war over high school talent and who is winning or who isn’t. Let us make this about a talented kid who deserves to have the best chances in life to succeed and not just at sport because right now we don’t know if he is going to succeed at track and field. There are so many possibilities and we hope the best ones fall into his lap.

Let us give O’Hara, who happens to be a smart kid, a chance to earn money and also have a solid education. Sports are fickle but an education lasts a lifetime, and that is what we need to understand.

That is what Raheem Robinson’s mother understood why she moved to protect her son’s interests as it related to him taking advantage of an opportunity to study overseas. She understands the reality that less than one percent of all athletes seeking to become the best in the world and getting paid in the process, ever achieves that goal. For the rest, it’s a different reality.

If you don’t believe me, do this simple thing and you will understand the stark reality. Add up all the professional sportsmen and women in the world who make a great living from sport and then divide the actual number who start out with the same ambition.

Here is something else you can do. Add up all the superstar athletes we see on TV and then divide that number by the number of us living on the planet, roughly 7 billion and tell me what number you come up with. There is one Bolt, one Jordan, one Shelly, one Messi, one Gretzky, one Mayweather, and then there is the rest of us, who have to do it the hard way. But when the Bolts et al are gone we are all still here.