Samardo Samuels is leaving school to support his family. Maybe he made a good decision after all.

Its easy to forget sometimes that for far too many of the athletes that we support night in and night out for our respective universities, they aren't just playing a sport because they love it. They aren't simply playing the sport because god blessed them with an athletic, 6'8" frame or allowed them to stand 6'4" and 250 lb while running a 4.4 40 or gave them the ability to throw a baseball 99 mph.

For a lot of these guys, sports are a way to a better life. They are a way to earn a paycheck. They are a way to support their family, or to put their family into a better financial situation.

Samardo Samuels is in precisely that position. Samuels is Jamaican, and once you get outside of the resorts and the beautiful beaches, Jamaica is a country that deals with all of the hardships you expect of the third world, the main one being poverty.

Samardo Samuels is leaving Louisville to support his family.
(photo credit: ESPN)

All you need to do is read a few paragraphs of this NY Daily News story on Samuels to get a feel for what life was like for Samuels back in Trelawny, Jamaica.

And for Rick Pitino, that is all he needed to hear.

"In Samardo's case, look, y'all have got to understand this is not a young man from the projects of New York or L.A. or Chicago," Pitino told reporters on Wednesday. "This is a young man who's doing it for his family, who's trying to better his family. What we think is poor, you don't know poor. Whether he's making a right or wrong decision is irrelevant because he's doing it for the right reasons. That's why I support his decision."

When Pitino says this, keep in mind that he will be losing his best returner and the third starter from a team that struggled this season, especially when put into comparison with in-state rival Kentucky.

The question asked by Eamonn Brennan at ESPN is whether or not this actually his the best decision Samuels can make financially. He has virtually no shot of being picked in the first round this season, and many believe being scooped up in the second round is unlikely for Samuels.

Brennan says that he could improve his draft standing next year, and while that may be true, I don't think Samuels will ever be a first round pick. Nothing is going to change the fact that he has a center's game, and there aren't 6'8" centers in the NBA. Even if Samuels ends up in, say, the Russian league, he would still make a decent salary.

Maybe we (myself very much included) should stop second guessing a kid who is putting the weight of supporting his family on his shoulders after his sophomore year in college.