Opinion: A Better Contest to Watch on Super Bowl Sunday

(Feb. 5) – Most Americans' TV plans for this Sunday include watching the Super Bowl. We look up to our sports stars and so we build our weekends around this competition.

But if you have teens, there's another contest you might consider watching. Before the Super Bowl, BET will air "Ten9Eight," a documentary about a teen business plan competition run by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).

Over the course of a year, filmmaker Mary Mazzio followed a handful of mostly minority young people as they learned how to come up with business ideas, figure out the economics of making a profit, market themselves and convince a panel of judges that their ideas might be worth an investment. The grand prize? $10,000.

William Mack & Ja'Mal Wills from the documentary Ten9Eight.

Richard Schultz / 50 Eggs Films

William Mack & Ja'Mal Wills compete in the documentary Ten9Eight.

It's inspirational stuff. Obviously, not everyone can win the grand prize, but when I saw the movie this fall, the best line in the whole film came from a young lady who didn't win. She shrugged and informed the cameras that hey, with her business, she could make $10,000 on her own.

That's an important message for kids to hear.

Many young people growing up in disadvantaged circumstances think that sports are a good way to lift themselves out of poverty. For a handful of extremely talented athletes this may be true, but few folks will ever get to play in the Super Bowl. A more likely path would be to get a job and establish a good work history, but here, too, young people face obstacles. The teen unemployment rate hit 27.1 percent in December.

But as the young people in "Ten9Eight" learn, when you can't get a job, you can make a job.

If you are your own boss, no boss can discriminate against you. Even an NFTE alum who did a stint in prison tells Mazzio he was able to start earning money shortly after his release by running his own concern.

If you have a good idea – and the NFTE kids propose everything from dance classes to video production to cakes on a stick – and work hard, it often doesn't take big chunks of change to start a business. And there's no limit to what you can earn. "Ten9Eight" introduces one former contestant whose beauty product business wound up employing her mom.

It is one thing to dream of being a pro football player. It is another to start a business making a product, such as one contestant's polarized football helmet visors, that football players need.

We'd all be better off if kids learned that the latter is more likely to get you on the field.
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Laura Vanderkam is author of "168 Hours" and "Grindhopping." Follow her on www.my168hours.com and www.lauravanderkam.com.