My opinion scribbled below is one of three which are more or less related. Greg Hitchcock wrote about Alan Webb's decision to turn away from intercollegiate athletics in favor of a career as a professional distance runner. One more article by a third author is yet to come on this subject.

Hitchcock posits that Webb makes a smart move by doing as a runner what athletes regularly do in the flagship sports. I agree with Hitchcock. Yet it's a bad idea most of the time for triathletes to take that same route, and I'll tell you why.

Webb, it has recently been rumored, stands to make $250,000 per year immediately from a major footwear company, and that's not including other endorsement deals, start money, prize money, and so on. Few if any triathletes can make that amount of money in today's climate.

Also, Webb is not foresaking college. He is going to attend school, he's just not going to run intercollegiate track.

Triathletes have to train too many hours in order to be world class, and that precludes a pro triathlete from going to college. What do you do if you're a talented 18- or 19-year-old triathlete? Many of them down the years have chosen the life of a touring pro.

Baseball offers the best analogy of what can happen—usually does happen—to a youngster who turns pro. Few pro baseballers ever manage to stick in the major leagues. Yet there's no safety net, no pension, no GI Bill, for a ballplayer who washes out after a career spent in the minors. Likewise, a hand-to-mouth, month-to-month existence is what awaits most pro triathletes, followed by the reality that hits you at 30- or 35-years-old, when you're broke or nearly so and have no marketable skill: You've got a tough go in front of you.

It's their choice, you say. Yes, it is. Yet it's often sports federations around the world who've got a hand of "assistance" outstretched, offering just enough of a stipend to keep these athletes away from college. Many of the "best" countries are busy identifying youthful multisport talent who've only reached their early teens. Indeed, through our own juniors and resident team programs our own federation, during the 90s, was only too happy to house and coach athletes who might've otherwise been away earning a degree (our federation is less likely to do that now).

Furthermore, a cursory look at some of our better athletes to come up in recent years—Joanna Zeiger (swim), Barb Lindquist (swim), Sheila Taormina (swim), Victor Plata (run), Becky Gibbs (swim), Ryan Bolton (run), Joe Umphenour (swim), Hunter Kemper (run), Siri Lindley (field hockey, lacrosse, ice hockey), Nick Radkewich (run), Michael Smedley (run), Laura Reback (swim)—demonstrates that the intercollegiate system might be the best developmental route for an athlete's later triathlon career. Lindquist and Taormina would never have become consummate swimmers if they'd not gone to college. Bolton was a fairly average runner out of high school. By his junior year at the University of Wyoming, however, he was one of America's top half-dozen collegiate cross-country runners.

The by-product, of course, is that these athletes also usually leave the intercollegiate system with a degree (often paid for by the institution).

Yes, there is the occasional Spencer Smith, Miles Stewart, Lance Armstrong, all highly developed triathletes by their 18th birthdays, but they're by far the exception to the rule. Furthermore, they weren't just promising or talented at 18, they were at or near the world's best at that age.

America is fortunate in that we have the world's best-developed system of four-year colleges and universities, and athletics are a large part of that dynamic. That allows the U.S. the luxury of using this system to develop future pro triathletes for us. It's a better system than one in which our own federation offers money to keep a teenager out of college until it's too late for him or her to go back and get an athletic scholarship.

We shouldn't even be looking for talented triathletes who're still in the junior ranks. Fielding a junior team for worlds ought not to be of any serious priority for us (except to expose an athlete to the fun of triathlon, hoping that he or she might come back to the sport after college). We should only be looking for our future talent as they're leaving college. Not only is it the most ethical thing to do, it's our best strategy if our goal is winning world championships.

If USAT's Tim Yount didn't always have this view, he has come 'round to it. "When kids approach me who're contemplating turning pro out of high school, I ask, 'You know who Hunter Kemper is, right?' I tell them that Hunter was barely a 10-minute two-miler in high school, but by the time he graduated from Brown he was running just a tick over 30 minutes for 10k. He never would've developed into a top triathlete had he not honed himself as a runner in college."

Is America alone in its view that pro triathletes are best found out of the post-collegiate ranks? "We are on an island by ourselves," said Yount. Much of the rest of the world seems content to lure kids away from college with a substistence stipend and some travel money.