Did Daryl Macon....

Write a tweet Friday basically saying he was leaving the program? He supposedly thanked the program, coaches, and fans like this was his final farewell.

Would be a big mistake.

I didn’t see it, but apparently yes, but it was taken down within 30 minutes. Is he leaving? Don’t have a clue. Some say yes, some say no.

Unless he is flunking out and will not play next year, this would be a very dumb thing to do. Surely, Scotty Thurman will share his past. Scotty went early when his buddy Corlis did. It was a mistake and I don’t think he ever got paid a dime to play after that. Maybe Daryl just likes the attention and will settle down after he gets an honest evaluation from the NBA.

Scotty played pro ball from 95-06. Majority was overseas, but he got paid. As for Daryl, unless he says he is leaving (I saw the tweet, he didn’t say he was leaving, but he did thank everyone for the love and support they’ve showed him for being a Razorback and giving him that opportunity), he is returning.

I hope you’re right and he does come back. But I understand if there are reasons he feels he has to go D-league or to Europe. I support him either way, but selfishly I want him to come back. Same with Barford.

I agree with you. Us wanting them to return is for us, not them. They have to do what is best for them, if he needs money then obviously leaving is the right choice. If he wants to return and get his degree, then that is what he feels is best for him. I’ll support him either way.

Unless he or his family is desperate for money right away, staying would be his best option. A stellar senior year with more national exposure and he might be drafted into the NBA next year and earn some real money, and he’ll have a college degree to fall back on as well.

I don’t think leaving early when you can raise your stock and get a degree is ever the better choice. Just because you go overseas doesn’t mean you’ll go to a top league or get top pay. Even if you’re not an NBA prospect, staying in college, improving your game, and getting more notoriety helps improve your value for an overseas contract. There’s a big difference in playing in Spain and playing in Iran.

Let’s use this for an example. Let’s say Macon leaves early and signs a contract in like Israel for 50k a year. He does that for 4 years and decides the overseas life isn’t for him and he wants to come back home and get into coaching or broadcasting or something else involved with basketball. Well, all those jobs require a 4-year degree. He’s going to have to go back to school to complete that. Tuition at the UofA is 25k a semester not including books. So, his first year salary is already gone, on top of him not working for a year to finish up school. And after bills and taking care of family and all that, I’m not even sure he comes out in the positive.

On the flip side. Say you come back to school, you make first team all-sec, you make a deeper run in the tournament and have more name recognition, and say he makes one of the bigger overseas leagues in like Greece or something, and they start him out at 75k a year. Same situation you play 4 years want to do something else, guess what, now you have a degree, you have more money, and you don’t have to sit out a year from working. In this situation you made more money and gave yourself more options. It’s a no brainer to me. If it was my kid, he’d get that education first, unless he was a bonafide 1st round pick and guaranteed millions. If we were in a a financial crisis, I’d tell him to take out a student loan for his last year and just pay it off with his signing bonus once he does go overseas. That degree is going to pay for that loan 10x over, I wouldn’t even worry about that.

This is absolutely not a true statement. I have a dual Masters Degree in both Biology and Environmental Science. At my last job, I got paid a little more than a person with a Bachelors and less than a person with a PHd, but no one makes enough to pay for the degree 10x over in that field. Now if he and his family need money NOW, he would have a huge issue by returning, he would have issues worrying about his family and their struggles, if it was me and I needed his help, I’d ask him to consider it. Do I want my kids to get degrees? Absolutely. If I needed help would they leave college to help? Yes. What you believe isn’t what’s always right. As I said, he has to do what is best for him, getting a degree isn’t always the best decision. Now if he gets in television as you suggested (they don’t need degrees to do it) then he will probably make decent money.

I’m not about to look up the statistics, but I know for A FACT that people with 4-year degree or higher on average make more than people that do not have one. And don’t try to tell me what I should believe, you don’t know anything about me. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, so don’t tell me what it’s like to not have any money. I was the first in my family to ever go to a 4-year college and get a degree, and I made it out, so I’m speaking about my experiences and what I’ve seen. And I’ve seen first hand, guys I grew up with that didn’t care about school/academics and all they wanted to do was play basketball/football and that’s all the prepared for and when that fell through they didn’t have anything to fall back on. Look up the percentages of athletes that go broke after their career. A lot of those guys didn’t get a proper education and didn’t learn to manage money and let people rip them off. When you have a degree you have options, I don’t care what you say, you’re in a much better position with it than without out. There’s a reason MILLIONS of people go to college, it’s not just for the parties.

Now, I’m not naive I know there’s some situations where it feels like a degree is BS and you wasted your time. I know that first hand better than most, after I graduated almost took me a year to finally get a job, I must have put in hundreds of applications and went on a ton of interviews before getting a job, and even then I thought the pay was kinda BS for all my hard work and qualifications, but that job lead to other opportunities and opened doors me, and without that degree I would have never got that.

  1. You aren’t the only one that grew up poor and made it out.
  2. The reason it took you a year to get a job is because you lacked experience. A person that works at a job with a HS diploma and has 4-5 years of experience while you go to college and get a degree will get hired over you because A. They have experience, you don’t and B. They don’t have to pay them as much. Now a person with a 4 year degree makes $250,000 more over their lifetime. That’s 42 years of working. That ain’t that much, it breaks down to $125 per week…
  3. I’ve seen those players that didn’t make it, I’ve also seen players that did (Chris Webber, Bobby Portis - neither had a degree while playing, and when Webber got offered his TV job, no degree.

As I said, it’s not what YOU BELIEVE, it is what he (Macon) believes. If he needs to leave early he will.

Edit: different sites say different things about pay. Some say 3.3 million more over you lifetime. That however is $100,000 a year job. There aren’t that many people that make that much.

LOL, did I send you a copy of my resume? You don’t know what experience I did or didn’t have. That’s just an arrogant and misinformed comment. FYI, the first job I got was a store manager, and in college I had worked as department manager for 3 years and had been in in a management training program with another company for 2 years, and was highly recommend by other store managers I had worked for before. What took me so long to get a job is a was VERY selective in my location and wasn’t willing to relocate because my wife, who was my fiance at the time, who was finishing up school. And the area I was at was very competitive with limited openings for the companies I was looking at. If I was willing to move anywhere I could have had a job very quickly.

And your examples are horrible. You’re talking about Bobby Portis, a consensus first round pick. Which I stated I would only leave school early for guaranteed millions, which he got. And Chris Webber who’s a hall of famer. Daryl Macon is neither of those, and that’s who we’re talking about. And I don’t really care what decision he makes, everybody has to make their own decisions. I’m speaking from my experiences and people I know PERSONALLY, that put all their eggs into basketball or football and didn’t care about academics and it came back to bit them. If it was my son, I’d tell him to get the degree, keep working on your game, and give yourself options in case basketball doesn’t work out. If that sounds outrageous to you, then I don’t know what to tell you. But, don’t ever try to speak like you know me or know anything about what I’ve been through.

You said if Macon goes overseas and returns and tries to get a TV job, he would need a degree. I used Webber because he didn’t have a degree when he got his TV gig (I believe he went back and got it since)

I would like to see both Macon and Barford play another year for the Hogs. Long term it would be in their best interest financially whether they play in the NBA, Europe, China or the Middle East. These guys simply aren’t on the radar yet with NBA scouts because of the JUCO years and that’s not meant as a slap at either of them, but it’s the truth.
If these guys can come back next season and play the entire year like they did down the stretch for the most part then they will garner the attention that they seek.
Any family member that would at this point tell them to not finish school is being selfish as well and foolishly irresponsible and there are numerous examples.

I remember a young man that many say to this day may be the greatest all around athlete in the history of Arkansas High School Athletics.
Basil Shabaz, Pine Bluff Football legend and Gatoraide National Player of the year. I knew his High School baseball coach, Billy Bock and he talked about the fact that he was the best athlete he had ever seen in all of his years of coaching both High School Football and Baseball.
This young man was pressured by family to take the 100K signing bonus that St. Louis Cardinals dangled out in front of him and the rest is history. Yes, he was never able to hit the curve ball and therefore never got to the big leagues.
Outside of injury this amazing athlete had a far better percentage opportunity of a career in football than he did in baseball. Darren McFadden wasn’t of the same caliber running back as Shabaz according to coaches that either coached or coached against both.
So, the moral of the story is this, no matter how bad you have it you have gotten this far why not wait, be patient and make the best decision for everyone rather than the few.

His grades probably added some influence on his decision as well. Poor example to compare someone that likely would not have made it into the UofA to someone that may have decided to leave school early.

Great post.

I don’t get “family needs money” anything short of an illness or death I’m telling my kid to stay in school increase your odds to get drafted and get your degree.

Wow Shabaz, the greatest that never was. His case is a classic case of putting all the eggs in the athletic basket. I’ve heard a lot of stories about him. Get your degree!!

Some families struggle, I mean really struggle, the kids see that and leave school to help out. Some people that think their families struggled don’t realize how little some have, and how much more difficult they could have had it.