By The Chief
First off I want to state the basis for my case. I will stick to the Miami police department as a reference to the police and Antonio Brown for the NFL. Antonio Brown is regarded as one of the greatest wide receivers currently able to play the game, even though he may currently not be on an NFL roster. Brown attended Miami Norland High school until he turned 18, excelling at football and track. Conversely, the average Miami officer attends high school for less than four years, although all who did not finish high school took and passed the GED exam which they are required to do according to the rules of the department. On top of NFL players like Brown attending high school for longer than a Miami officer, they also are required to spend more time in college. An NFL player must spend two years in a university before they are allowed to register for the draft. The Miami police department does not require their officers to attend a day of college. This may seem strange, but I will explain why it makes perfect sense. Brown exceeded expectation and spend 3 years at the University of Central Michigan. I wish he had spent the full four years, but we’ll get to that later.
Uneducated NFL Players Can’t Learn Playbooks Or Read The Defense Correctly
I decided to start out with this one because I thought it was the most obvious. Think about where you were in your life in high school. You were just coming out of a place that valued your ability to find x over learning skills that would help in your daily lives, like budgeting and reading complex documents such as an NFL playbook. There is a reason that they have you take the wonderlick test after being drafted to an NFL team. They need to learn about your ability to critically think when faced with an unfamiliar defense. I can tell you for a fact that if I just came out of high school and joined the NFL, I’d have no idea what was going on.
Police don’t have this problem. There is no “cop playbook”, or if there is one it must not be written very well. If they are faced with a problem that would plague any normal person, and yes even an NFL player, they have oodles of options to get out of it in the form of a night stick, pepper spray, a taser and 3 deadly weapons accompanying a license to kill. If there is a cop playbook, it must just say “use your weapons” on every page. If someone handed me all those weapons and the legal right to kill when I came out of high school I would never have a difficult decision to make. Even holding a gun at a person seems to be enough to get your point across.
NFL Players Get Paid More
I mean, this makes sense doesn’t it? The more money you make, the more education you should require. Doctors go to school for like 12 years and see some of the highest wages in the world. Teachers go to school for 6-10 years and- Okay, I see my mistake. Let’s move on.
NFL Players Aren’t Put Into A Position Of Authority
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for milk. If you give a person authority, he’ll make you do whatever he wants. This may seem like a reason as to why cops should be schooled more, but it is actually a point for the other side. NFL players naturally get told what to do. It’s only natural for a child to want to take advice from an adult even through to their late 20’s. They use advice from their elders to grow as people and learn how to play the game better. In this way, they could use as much schooling as they can get.
Cops on the other hand, are different creatures. They are naturally rebellious. A person doesn’t become an officer because they are shy. An aspiring cop longs for power, and they are immediately put into a position of authority when they start their jobs. So adding more years of grown ups telling them what to do is useless. It is best to just take a power hungry kid and turn them into an individual closely following the cultural conventions of policing set up in the early 1800’s.
All Eyes Are On NFL Players
Once you sign that contract, and for a lot of people even before you sign, you are giving away your right to freedom. All eyes of the media and your fans are on you at all times. And I’ll give it to you, a lot of players who did their time in college still make mistakes, which is why I think we should be discussing making 4 years of college football a requirement to play professionally. We would never have another Ray Rice or Joe Mixon situation that make the USA look terrible. Students would be learning more and more about what not to do when facing the spotlight. I say take it one step further and throw a “what not to do when your famous” class onto college athlete’s course catalog.
No one goes around watching what cops do. Yes, they have body cams, but who watches those? Other cops? Officers are about as far away from the spotlight as Randy Jackson (Michael Jackson’s brother, not the dawg guy). A cop could pull someone over, hold them at gunpoint, make them step out of their car at and sing mary had a little lamb while dancing the macarena all without anyone ever finding out. The police departments will never have an image problem because no one cares about which cop is dating which other cop. No one cares which ones are being traded from the Miami PD to the Tampa PD. No one gets mad when a cop only rushes 30 yards after a criminal. There is no way a cop could ever make America look bad, so there is no reason they should have to go to school for longer to learn how to be a self sufficient and confident member of the human race. No one cares if they’re not.
If An NFL Player Does His Job Wrong, Someone Gets Hurt
This is one I feel very strongly about. An NFL player needs more time in college to learn how to control their strength and rage. Have you ever gotten a massive, hormone filled teenager made at you? It’s like a bull is charging. If a player doesn’t spend a long enough time learning the proper way to hit someone, that someone can get a concussion, or broken leg, or in some cases die. We can’t allow dangerously strong young men to just go out onto the field without a little bit more education.
Another reason for this is the development of a young brain. An adolescent brain will not fully develop until around age 25, giving a 21 year old NFL rookie 4 years to keep his brain safe from other professional giants while it grows. If we just threw players into the league when they turned 18, that would leave a whopping 7 years before their brain developed to get hurt and screw everything up. Again, another reason to force football players to stay in college for 4 years.
If a cop does his job wrong, he doesn’t get hurt. Again, all a cop has to do to solve a problem is hit it with either a night stick, pepper spray, taser or bullets. If he/she still manages to get hurt like that I don’t know what to tell ya.
So for all you naysayers out there who think cops should have to go to school for longer, or get more sensitivity training or anything stupid like that, you have officially been proven wrong. You’re welcome.
Source: https://www.criminaljusticedegreeschools.com/criminal-justice-resources/police-departments-by-metro-area/miami-officer-requirements/#:~:text=Applicants%20to%20the%20Miami%20Police,FDLE%20Police%20Examination%20through%20an