College club rower

You did well as a club rower, but your erg scores and performance on water only go so far. There are only a few Olympic spots and you don't have the discipline and accomplishment needed to get one. Sorry.

D-III Rower

You're the top rower on your varsity team, but you haven't been competing at a rigorous enough level to be an Olympic hopeful. Hey, it was fun while it lasted, right?

Scholarship D-I Rower

No one has any complaints about your performance and there's no doubt you're talented. Unfortunately, so is almost every other D-I rower, and you realized this a while back. Good thing you have a job lined up after graduation.

D-I Rower at Top-Three School

You're on a great team and you're a fantastic athlete. There's the possibility that competing in the Olympics is in your future, but there's a lot of work ahead of you and the pool of great athletes in the sport isn't great for your chances.

NCAA Championship winner, partial superhero

You were a part of a team that won an NCAA championship and helped to increase the popularity of the sport in the process. Anyone who rows competitively knows who you are and any coach would sell their homes (or at least a few organs) to have you on their crew. You are practically made out of awesome.

Ever hear the phrase, "one in a million"? Well, you'll need to be exactly that if you want to go pro. Think about the best high school athlete in your district of 10 high schools. The absolute Big Man in the area. He gets headhunted so hard by colleges that he can barely spare time for his school work, let alone friends. Then, he gets into college and is a total all star there...of the 12 best all stars on his team that year. Well, guess, what? Only one of those guys will be a pro in five years...if this is a top class of athletes out of the the past several years.

So, even if you're in the 95th percentile of all NCAA athletes in your sport, you've still got a snowball's chance in a microwave of going pro. Not to mention actually mattering at all. More than likely, you'll still be struggling to eke out a living on the bench for a year or stuck on a farm team until you're forced to look for other work. We could bludgeon you with more data and stats, but as you dream about success, just make sure you're hedging your bets.

In other words: enjoy that "alternative" career, Shmooper. (#realtalk)