Chip Shots: The Graduate Assistant

We are already at the preseason scrimmage portion of spring scholastic sports. Fans, parents, friends, and the athletes they’re supporting and cheering will begin regular season competition around the time the state boys’ basketball finals take place at the end of this month.

There is also something going on for college athletes during this time of year.

“He’s talking about the NFL draft, or the college basketball players who will declare for the NBA draft next month to take place this summer,” maybe… a handful of the readers might be thinking.

There are numerous TV commercials this time of year showing athletes who will never play their sport competitively after graduation later this spring, instead heading to their regular jobs more closely related to their fields of study.

I am, however, not talking about those college athletes either.

A smaller group of college athletes will endeavor toward a coaching career by taking on graduate assistant roles in their sport of choice.

This might not seem glamorous to most of this readership, but this spring and summer, when these athletes pursue s limited number of opportunities, their initial efforts will appear to be – on the surface – high effort, low reward.

The high effort is a certainty, but long term, will the payback be a low reward?

Let’s look at the high effort:

A graduate assistant must cast an extremely broad net with a stalker mentality among some people he or she has never met.

They’ll pursue positions where they’ll watch hours of film, log data into massive spreadsheets, do some of the grunt work in offseason conditioning – not an all-inclusive list while enrolling in graduate studies at the university whose athletic program they pursue feels they are a suitable match.

Urban Meyer, Ohio State’s head football coach who also was an assistant at Notre Dame, lived on canned food decades before his current state: a pregame host on Fox’s Noon Kickoff college football pregame show following the years he spent earning generational money at the University of Florida and with the Buckeyes.

His journey to college football fame and fortune wasn’t a smooth path.

He spent some time in the Atlanta Braves’ minor league system, then played defensive back at the University of Cincinnati before he had to take on a stalker’s approach in pursuit of a graduate football assistant for a major college football program.

If you look and listen closely to Meyer, his presence is strong, but he is not a natural extrovert, nor would you get the impression he did any type of grandstanding in his late teens and early 20s.

He was a Buckeye Boys’ State delegate in June 1981 on the campus of Bowling Green University who lived on my floor (Cobb) where, at mealtimes, he did more listening than talking.

Back then who had any inkling he’d land where he has today? His first name, like most good Catholic boys, was a saint’s/pope’s name, and that is what stood out more than anything. I remember him telling some of us nerds to spend some time at the rec center and not push a lot of paper around for a make-believe town government after 4/4:30 p.m.

Meyer worked and studied at least 100 hours per week in a very unglamorous role in what seemed at the start as a high effort/low reward position.

Knowing what little bit I knew, I would have loved being a fly on the wall to hear and see his relentless pursuit of a graduate assistant role in college football.

While he was an assistant to the late Lou Holtz at Notre Dame, he interviewed at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) – a Mid-American Conference (MAC) football program set in some of Ohio’s flattest land and unpretentious surroundings.

The work wasn’t so great either, according to a clip of Meyer playing across social media platforms.

Meyer talked about the BGSU job when he returned to the Notre Dame campus, Meyer told Holtz he was not going to take the BGSU job because it wasn’t a particularly good job.

Holtz told Meyer in fact the young Notre Dame assistant WAS going to take the job, punctuating the discussion saying, “Of course it’s not a great job! If it was a great job, they wouldn’t be calling your (rear end)!”

So, Meyer, who slaved away as a graduate assistant, then landed an entry-level position assistant role at Notre Dame, landed a head coaching position that guaranteed high effort/low reward was still a part of his life.

I’ll spare Meyer’s career progression, and note the Ashtabula, Ohio native turned around Bowling Green’s program, then landed a job in Utah where he continued his success in turning around programs into limelight visibility the aforementioned schools never attained previously.

With this said, there are a few students who will quietly wait to step into the business world, and land nowhere near any professional sports training camps after they graduate.\

Some of us might see them progress into high-viz roles like Meyer held, or we might not see their progress at all because if falls through the cracks of media coverage because many outlets give the people what they want.

Former Warsaw Tiger (Class of 2021) kicker/triple option B-back Colton Wampler is an area alum who has been a graduate assistant at Indiana State University. If you run into him on a rare break or rare return trip home, ask the young man about his current role, how many hours he works and studies, and how broadly he cast his net to land his current graduate assistant role.

Finally, find out if he views his pursuits as high effort/low reward.

We wish all the college athletes the best in their post graduate pursuits, but my most abundant appreciation goes for the grind of the graduate assistant.