First off, before anyone sends child protective services after me, this topic is just me having a little fun with data analysis. The most likely scenario is that my boy grows up playing soccer with occasional hikes on the weekend. But it’s fun to use our imagination.
Not every problem can be solved by comparing the number of google searches or looking at CPM numbers. Sometimes we have to dig deeper. The latest problem facing me and my two month old son is what sport I should get him playing. It’s not as simple as figuring out what sport has the best salary. There are a few other factors which I think are important. Nevermind the fact that my boy will end up being half the size of a typical NFL lineman or a foot shorter than a typical NBA player.
Sports salaries are notoriously volatile and generally have very short durations. The number of paid professional athletes also vary greatly from sport to sport. I would also like to estimate the “conversion rate” for becoming a professional athlete in each of the big US professional sports. With those two data points, I think we can settle on a good sport for my boy.
First, let’s take a look at total professional sports career earnings. Football(American) players have notoriously short careers. Even with their multimillion dollar contracts, my estimate for the total lifetime earnings for football players is about $4 million. Although European soccer has huge payoffs, soccer’s pay is dismal in the US. I wouldn’t be surprise if the winner of the Sounders Super Search pulls in a cool $30k per year. For this analysis we’re only going to look at sports salaries available in the US. Baseball, golf and hockey all have similar career salaries. Basketball has by far the largest career salary at a whopping $12.5 million. I think this is mostly attributable to the fast their are only 5 players on the court per team and you can really sell your personality in basketball (see Kobe, Lebron, MJ). So, if we assume that our decision was based purely on total career salary. I would put my sub six foot boy into basketball. But before we go out and start practicing our dunks, lets broaden the analysis.
The other piece of the equation is the actual odds of going pro in each of the respective sports. I could just divide number of pros by the total population, or the total population of people under 18. But I wanted to take things a step further and look at high school participation rates vs professional salaries available. In the US, soccer(MLS only) and basketball are very competitive. Interestingly, hockey has the best odds. However, there’s likely a higher barrier to entry for high school hockey participation, so I will take this hockey recommendation with a grain of salt. And of course there’s Malcom Gladwell’s observation in Outliers that kids born later in the year (my guy was born in November) have a much lower likelihood of making it to the professional level in hockey.
So, before I give my final conclusions and reveal the data, what sport do you think we should go with?