At 11:35 AM -0400 8/27/96, Brian D. Walrath wrote:
> I just read that Jason Botterill has turned down a $500,000 signing bonus
> from the Dallas stars so he can return to Michigan.
> ...
> It is nice to see that greed doesn't effect all players.  Jason has said all
> along that he wants to finish his education and appears that he will do just
> that.  Although many of us would have been more than happy to seem him go.
 
Sort of a side note here - I agree that it's great that he wants to get his
degree.  Yet I would challenge the suggestion that a player who does decide
to leave has to be greedy.  A number of things could happen - for example,
he could suffer a career ending injury.  This happened to someone I knew
when I was at RPI - he could have signed for a lot of money after RPI won
the NCAA championship as some of his teammates did, but he decided to
return for his senior year.
 
Midway through, in a game at Yale, he went in one on one against a
defenseman who hit him low right in the knee.  Initial prognosis was that
he would never skate again.  That turned out to be false, and he did return
to finish the season and even make it to the NHL.  But with that close
call, I would bet that if he had it to do over, he would have taken the
money, and I believe I remember him saying so at the time.  I don't believe
that the contract he wound up with matched the one he could have signed the
year before (although part of that was that 1985 was the year of the NHL,
really Detroit, spending spree on college free agents and the teams became
very conservative after the players didn't pan out right away).
 
I sure can't blame anyone for leaving early.  Whether a player decides to
sign or to stay in school, everyone's decision is made based on his own
circumstances.  There are reasons to go and reasons to stay.  My personal
opinion is that because the money might not be there in a year if you get
hurt or your stock drops, then if it were me and the offer was good enough,
I would almost certainly take it.  I don't think that's greed, rather, it
seems like a sound financial decision.  School is always there; not
necessarily so for pro hockey and hundreds of thousands of dollars.  An
undergrad degree can be considered a means to an end - either a (possibly
well-paying) career or an advanced degree.  Here, that end is achievable
without the degree.
 
Say a college student is offered an extremely high-paying job in exchange
for him agreeing to stop going to school full-time and start working for
the employer.  Should it matter if that employer is IBM, Peat Marwick or
the NHL?
 
And remember, there's nothing that says you have to finish your degree in
four years.  My best friend left school early in 1988 to play pro baseball,
which he did for eight years, but for the first two years immediately
following his signing, he returned to UMass in the fall to complete his
degree, paid for by the team.  He used it to step into a good job right
after he retired last year.  He and I wound up finishing our undergrad
degrees about the same time - him because of leaving early to play
baseball, me because I went through co-op.  If his decision was one of
greed, I don't know what to say about mine - since two big reasons why I
opted for co-op were the ability to earn money for school and to gain
experience that would help me land a good job.
 
I haven't read the stories about Botterill, but he could be staying because
he really likes Michigan, because he does want to finish his degree before
embarking on a pro career, or because he thinks he can increase his value
even more.  But his decision to stay isn't any better or worse than
decisions made by other players who do sign.  It's just what is right for
him based on what is important to him and his circumstances.  If Botterill
made the best decision for him, then I'm happy for him, but I don't feel
any differently about his decision than I do about Mike Grier's and Steve
McKenna's decisions to take the money and go pro.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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