football is everything

Yesterday I spoke about how stupid religion can get. Today, I wanted to continue on the subject of stupidity.
Last Sunday night I saw what was probably the greatest commercial of American stupidity. No, I'm not talking about the trailer for Jackass 2 although that is a great example of stupidity. No, I'm talking about the new Nike commercial, "Football is everything." Advertising should have some truth to it. Football is not everything. It's not even half of anything really.
Let's look at this realistically. Maybe half of the high school football players get a scholarship to go play college ball. If they pass their four or five years of college then maybe about 400 of them go to the pro draft, out of those 400 maybe 200 will make the cut to stay on a team for a number of years. Now let's say they can stay in the pro for six years, so they'll be almost 30 years old. What now? A BA doesn't get you anything. Go back to school to pick up your Master's? or maybe your Ph.D. yeah that's not very likely to happen.
So what about those high school football players that didn't get to go to college on a football scholarship? Maybe some of them go to college and become successful people that make lots of money, have families and leave their high school football glory where it should be left, in high school.
Football is a means to an end. It's just like the Army. The reserves or national guard to be more specific. Most of the people I know are using the Army as a means. You get paid to learn a job, then if you stay in long enough you eventually become a leader. The reserves and national guard pay 100% of your tuition needs, whereas active duty only pays 75%. Still, not too shabby.
Active duty vs. a bachelor's degree. A soldier has four years of job experience in a specific field, day in and out. A college graduate may have a few internships, maybe a semester long one and maybe he was in a club that gave them some more experience. A college graduate has spent the last four years learning. The soldier has only eat, breathe, and slept the job. There's upsides and downsides to it all. One has knowledge, the other has discipline. One has more job experience than the other.
No one single thing is everything, least of all football. Scrap that commercial Nike and think honesty. It is the best policy.