Duke Recruiting: The Next Charlie Ward?

Iowa’s Jalen Suggs comes from an athletic family and he’s clearly a guy who loves to compete. He plays football and basketball in high school and would like to play both in college, a la Charlie Ward.

Some people are willing to let him do that apparently but he should think carefully. Odds are you won’t be able to do both at a high level and if you see your future in basketball, particularly a potential pro future, football is a major threat to your eventual livelihood.

On the other hand, you can’t really play football at a high level without training year round so that makes basketball a problem.

You can pull off a pro split with either sport and baseball - see Deion Sanders, Danny Ainge, Dave DeBusschere and Bo Jackson - but aside from the very different natures Suggs’s favorite sports, they overlap.

So it’s hard to see him doing both well for long even if he stays healthy.