NCAA Is Largely Responsible For Lack Of African-Americans In MLB
he percentage of African-Americans in MLB hit an all-time high in 1981 at 18.7 percent; since then, that number has been on a steady decline, and has dropped 70 percent to 7.8 percent entering the 2015 season. That’s an alarming rate and something must be done in order to raise those statistics. There is one problem; MLB can do everything in their power to try and generate more interest in their sport in the African-American community, but that won’t translate into more African-Americans in MLB. The reason for that is because MLB is not the culprit behind this issue — that designation goes to the NCAA.
The NCAA has reaped the rewards of the success of football and men’s basketball for the entirety of their existence. In return, they allow universities to offer full scholarships to the players in those sports. When it comes to college baseball, there aren’t any full rides to college for athletes, just partial scholarships. With the athletic abilities of young African-Americans, there are many who are extremely talented at more than one sport. If kids are offered to play basketball or football collegiately, in addition to a partial baseball scholarship, the majority are going to choose to play football or basketball so they aren’t responsible for paying part of their college tuition. 88 percent of college baseball players are white and that is unacceptable.
The hip hop culture that is synonymous in African-American communities is more closely knit with the NBA and NFL than it is with MLB. These young kids look at this and see that their idols are at basketball games or football games and that has a big influence on their decisions as well. Heck, Jay-Z is an agent now. Drake is at every Toronto Raptors game. Wale is a huge Washington Wizards fan. Kids recognize this and put two and two together.
MLB kind of has its hands tied at the moment. Unless they can begin funneling money to the NCAA to allow for full scholarships to be offered, there’s nothing else they can do about the NCAA issue. With the cultural factor, my suggestion would be for MLB to hire an entirely African-American marketing team and allow them to build a campaign to try and bring part of that hip hop culture to MLB. MLB needs to go to whatever lengths are necessary, immediately, or risk losing the African-American community altogether.
http://www.rantsports.com/mlb/2015/05/04/ncaa-is-largely-responsible-for-lack-of-african-americans-in-mlb/
