I don't know about that. If you fall short of your aspirations at the PhD or postgrad level, there's always quantitative finance or any number of other lucrative careers where your background will at least get you in the door for an interview.

For the athlete, it's literally all or nothing.

Except, for so many of us who have studied hard science, the idea of a career in quantitative finance is the exact analog of the purebred racehorse who breaks his leg on the track and gets taken out back for an acute brain-scrambling.

As the example originating this subthread shows, quantitative finance isn't even close to the only option for a lucrative career available to those educated in the hard sciences.

> there's always quantitative finance

From the perspective of understanding the universe, that is nothing. Decent consolation prize though.

Student athletes could go to class, engage in scholarship, and learn something.