Bowling Green State University Athletics
Pardon To Play Professionally in France
July 18, 2002 | Men's Basketball
July 18, 2002
Former Bowling Green State University and Lincolnview High School point guard Brandon Pardon has signed to play professional basketball in Nantes, France this season.
Pardon averaged 10.7 points and 6.3 assists for Bowling Green last season and 10 points and 7 assists a game as a junior. Lincolnview won the Division IV state title his senior season in 1997 and was state runner-up in 1996.
Pardon considered offers to get into coaching at the college level but decided to go with his long-held desire to play pro basketball.
"I kind of weighed my options. I didn't want to be coaching and thinking that I could be playing. The money's better and I'm doing something I love to do," Pardon said Sunday.
"Next year when I sign my taxes and it says 'professional athlete,' that will be very cool. I'll be getting paid to do something I love," he said.
Nantes is a city of around 500,000, located 30 miles south of Paris. Pardon's team will play 30 games over 10 months. He will be one of two Americans on the team.
His team will play in the second-highest rated league of four French professional leagues. Pardon has played overseas before, on a trip to Chile with BGSU two years ago, but this is his first trip to Europe.
"I don't know too much French. I've been looking at it a little and I'm going to enroll in a course in it at a university over there," he said.
