Despite the large body of evidence on the benefits of sports, there continues to be growing concern regarding the overemphasis on sports, especially related to the social and educational development of blacks and other minority youth. This article introduces a conceptual framework or typology for analyzing the connection between sports participation and academic engagement. While the typology introduced presents three "ideal types" (maintenance, incentive, and integrative) as models that characterize the connection between sports participation and academic engagement, the actual experiences of individual black student-athletes may contain elements of one, two, or all three models across the stages of one's life experiences in sports and education from childhood to early adulthood. The authors present a case study that illustrates the manner in which each of the models in the typology may operate in the experiences of a single individual across family, community, and school settings from the earliest stages of childhood through adolescence and early adulthood. As the typology for analyzing the connection between sports participation and academic engagement indicates, and the case study illustrates, the question of whether sports impedes or enhances aspirations and chances for attaining mobility goals among blacks is more complex than often portrayed. To conclude, sports participation and school engagement among black high school students should not be viewed as necessarily antithetical forces. Among black student-athletes, the development of a strong connection between sports and academics, following tenets of the integrative model, is especially needed prior to reaching high school. (Contains 1 footnote and 1 figure.)