"pro sports as an escape from the ghetto" needs to die as a theme. There are only a few thousand professional athletes in the US across all sports, most of them men, far from all of them black - and there are something like 30 million blacks in the US.

I can't say how many of those 30 million are living in entrenched poverty, but simply seeing the discrepancy between these numbers revokes the idea that pro sports is a viable way to improve your lot if you are in a poor place.