By William Canty
A $2.8 billion settlement and a shifting policy landscape have pushed American college athletics into a new phase. For the first time, schools can pay athletes directly, and the once-theoretical promise of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) earnings is now a real economic force. These developments are reshaping not just the economics of sport, but the expectations placed on young athletes—many of whom are still teenagers.
Yet in the race to modernize contracts, media rights, and sponsorship deals, we may be ignoring a more fundamental shift: the growing cognitive demands on student-athletes.
A college quarterback today isn’t just navigating playbooks. He’s managing coursework, team obligations, social media visibility, and potentially hundreds of thousands in sponsorship revenue. In the U.S., these responsibilities arrive all at once—often without a roadmap. European systems tend to silo elite athletes into sports academies or club systems with reduced academic pressure. In Asia, academic rigor remains the focus, and sports are still largely extracurricular. Only in the U.S. are students expected to perform at a professional level in both arenas.
This hybrid identity—the academic athlete—isn’t widely acknowledged in policy or practice. But neuroscience, increasingly, suggests it should be.
Research over the past decade has shown that human performance, especially under pressure, is deeply shaped by perception. The brain is not a passive receiver of reality; it predicts, filters, and adjusts based on internal models built over time. For student-athletes, this means their response to stress is rarely objective. It’s shaped by their mindset.
An athlete who has been conditioned—by coaches, parents, or past experiences—to see pressure as a threat will experience a predictable physiological cascade: higher cortisol, reduced working memory, and slower reaction times. But one trained to see pressure as a challenge activates a different set of circuits altogether. Gratitude, confidence, and focus aren’t just helpful attitudes. They are measurable neurological states that influence performance.
Here lies both the problem and the opportunity.
Most academic institutions still treat mental skills training as an afterthought—if they address it at all. Physical conditioning is prioritized, as are test scores and GPA. But the ability to manage stress, direct attention, and make effective decisions under pressure? That’s left to chance.
This gap is not just academic. It’s economic.
In a world where college athletes can now monetize their talent, the stakes of performance—on and off the field—are higher than ever. Missed deadlines, failed courses, or mental burnout don’t just cost games. They can derail earnings, reputations, and futures.
Meanwhile, the tools to support cognitive performance are not speculative. They exist. Breathwork, visualization, and targeted coaching can help athletes (and students more broadly) develop executive function—the same set of skills that supports planning, self-control, and resilience. These interventions are low-cost and high-impact. They don’t require more hours in the day. They require better structure, better habits, and better systems.
This isn’t just about better athletes. It’s about developing better adults.
The same mental agility that helps a point guard read a defense also enables a student to organize a group project, manage internship responsibilities, or navigate job interviews. As the future of work becomes more self-directed and performance-based, these skills matter—perhaps more than ever.
If the United States is going to continue leading in sport-education integration, it must evolve its definition of training. That means investing in cognitive tools the same way we invest in weight rooms or recruiting. It means acknowledging that emotional regulation, adaptability, and focus are not soft skills. They are competitive advantages.
Europe and Asia may take different approaches, but all face the same challenge: preparing young people for an increasingly complex world. The academic athlete—far from being a contradiction—is one possible model. Not every student will go pro, but every student will need to perform under pressure.
We should give them the tools to do so.