Why Do Football Players Get College Scholarships? And What Can Non-Athletes Learn From This?

Why do football players get college scholarships?

This may seem like a dumb question, but I’d be willing to bet that most people get the answer wrong.

“Because they were great football players in high school.”

That answer, or a variation of it, is what I expect most people would say in response to the question.

It’s wrong.

Football players get college scholarships because the college believes the athlete will be a great football player in college. Period. End of story.

The fact that a football player was great in high school only demonstrates the likelihood that the player will be great in college. The college isn’t rewarding the football player for their past achievements on the field. They are enticing the player with the expectation that the athlete will continue to excel on the field.

So, what does this have to do with scholarships for non-athletes?

The principle for earning non-athletic scholarships is the same. Scholarships are not awards for a student’s past achievements.

Social media is filled with baffled parents whose high-achieving kid didn’t earn scholarships. And, for the most part, this is because these students and parents thought that winning scholarships was about listing all of their past achievements. And, unfortunately for them, they found out that isn’t what scholarships are looking for.

Instead, scholarships are awarded to students who are most likely to succeed in college and in their future careers. Scholarships want to be a part of their winners’ future success.

This is why most competitive scholarships require an essay, a video, or an interview. If all scholarships cared about were stats, they could simply get the student’s transcript, test scores, and pick the student with the highest numbers.

Certainly, past achievements and stats can be an important piece of the scholarship puzzle. Many scholarships have minimum GPA requirements, for example. Past achievement is one way that future success can be predicted. But past achievement isn’t enough.

Students need to demonstrate, particularly in their scholarship essays, that they have goals for the future and a plan to achieve those goals. They should absolutely point to past achievements to demonstrate a genuine interest and ability to achieve those future goals. But, they must have goals and plans for the future.

It is the combination of future goals and plans, backed up by relevant past achievements, that makes a student’s Personal Narrative. In my experience, a compelling Personal Narrative is the most crucial factor for scholarship success. Whether working with a top student like Victoria, or a more ‘average’ student (his mother’s words) like Talon, or a student in between like Isabella, it was their compelling Personal Narrative that allowed them to have repeated scholarship success.

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