RULE 13

You’re not going to the NBA, so hold off on the bling and spare us the attitude.

If you are a high school or college athlete, used to being treated like a rock star and having the rules bent for you, here’s a reality check: the shoe contract is not in the mail, and you might want to wait on the new Hummer. Also, the get-off-with-a-slap-on-the-wrist card is a temp.

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According to the NCAA, less than 3 percent of high school seniors playing on their school’s basketball teams will go on to play on an NCAA college team. Fewer than one out of every seventy-five college senior basketball players—about 1.3 percent—will ever be drafted by an NBA team.72

So let’s run the numbers: you may be the best basketball player at your high school, even the best basketball player in your school’s history. But the odds of your making the NBA are only slightly better than your chances of being the first man to land on Venus. Only three out of every ten thousand high school seniors—or about .03 percent—will ever be drafted by the NBA. The other 99.97 percent have to hope they used their skills to get themselves a good education and learn some solid life lessons they can carry over into the real world.*

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

In Virginia, some schools considered banning the traditional post-football-game handshake between the opposing teams because some kids failed to properly get into the spirit of the moment.73 There were reports of kicking, spitting, and various other incidents of unsportsmanlike behavior. This could have been an opportunity for a come-to-Jesus moment when the sweaty athletes were taught the importance of behaving themselves: they could have been made—just for instance—to do some laps or push-ups or ride the bench. Instead, the coaches voted unanimously to ban the handshakes altogether.

“You got beat 56-0 and you want someone to tell you ‘Good game’ 35 times?” one of the appeasing principals asked. “If you go through the line, there’s a possibility that somebody’s gonna push somebody, hit somebody, and it’s going to be a big problem at the end of the game.”

There’s a pattern here, because heaven forbid we enforce standards of good conduct and actually teach kids how to behave. Instead of teaching nutrition, schools ban foods (on the assumption that if there are no soda machines in high schools, kids won’t be able to find soda anyplace else); instead of teaching critical thinking, schools offer zero tolerance. So, it’s hardly surprising that some educators think that asking them to teach sportsmanship is asking too much.

One parent pointed out that the handshake ban seemed to miss the whole point of high school sports.

“None of these kids are pros, but they’re going to get jobs somewhere and run up against people who are unfair to them and to others,” he wrote. “Scholastic athletics is about how to deal with life and adversity.” If you don’t learn that in sports, you’ll have to pick it up somewhere else.

Play hard, try to excel at your sport, enjoy your teammates and your success—but remember that no matter how good you are, you aren’t exempt from the rules that govern other people.