“We didn’t ask Taylor Swift to go sing in the Vanderbilt chorus. Jennifer Lawrence is not showing up to star on ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ at the University of Louisville. We didn’t make Mark Zuckerberg stay at Harvard for four years before he founded Facebook.”
Clay Travis believes the NFL and NBA long instituting age requirements for inclusion in their respective leagues completely defies logic in the modern workforce, arguing that 18-year-olds should be allowed pursue whatever career path they want, whenever they want.
“This is a country of risk-takers. If you want to risk your future as an athlete, you should be able to risk your future as an athlete,” Travis said. “If you have the ability to make a living at 18, you should be able to make as much money as you possibly can.”
Even though Travis thinks the NFL’s age regulation requiring athletes to be three years removed from high school makes sense at first glance given the extreme physicality of the sport, Travis believes the rule doesn’t pertain to 100% of players.
“For most people that rule makes sense, but rules don’t make sense for everyone,” he said. “Do you know whose career never took off in the NFL because he was required to stay for 3 years and get the crap beaten out of him playing college football? Marcus Lattimore, South Carolina running back.”
Lattimore of course, was one of college football’s best players before suffering a career-ending leg fracture his junior year, a year after already tearing the ACL of his other leg.
“If he’d been allowed to go pro after his freshman year, he would have been ready.”