You’ve been offered your dream job. It’s what you’ve been working toward throughout your college career.

It’s sitting at your feet, and the only thing you have to do is accept the generous offer.

But there’s a catch:

You have to leave school a year early.

What do you do? Follow the example set by Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno and now, Asher Allen.

Stafford, Moreno and Allen all opted out of their senior year to enter the NFL draft. They will leave Athens without a floppy piece of paper with fancy print telling them they are smart folks who didn’t crap out of college.

Football is what they want to do for a living – it’s their hustle. Some want to write, some want to teach. They just so happen to excel tremendously at a sport that pays lucrative amounts of money to toss a ball around. And that, my friends, does not require any floppy paper of any kind. Oh, except contracts that will depict exactly how many zeros and commas will be on their paychecks, as well as how many loaves of bread they get to heave around for a MasterCard commercial.

When the news broke of the underclassmen’s early departure from Georgia, especially now with Allen, there seemed to be a great deal of disappointment and despair.

But why is there such a God-awful stigma associated with college athletes leaving early to pursue their lifelong dream of playing a professional sport?

With all due respect professors, the bottom line is that listening to your somewhat incoherent babbling about consumer economics or classical rhetoric may not be soothing enough for Stafford, Moreno or Allen (especially as the ever-so audible cha-chings ring in their ears).

And to all you “scholars” outraged that these young men will not spend another year working toward that floppy piece of paper, I’m pretty sure they can withstand the scrutiny for a cool seven-figure deal with an NFL team on Draft Day.

The guaranteed money in their signing bonuses will have them all pointing and laughing at you while they are driving their 2009 Ferraris all the way to the bank.

What if these young men returned for their senior year, tore an ACL or two and then had to work at Chuck E. Cheese for a living? Instead of suiting up in pads, they’ll be suiting up as the mouse.

That could be the difference of a house in The Hamptons or a house in Hampton, Va.

“Unforeseen occurrences can come up and then you won’t have a chance to get there,” Allen said. “It’s a risk staying and a risk leaving, so I had to do what felt right.”

While Stafford will hold up his future jersey within the first hour of the draft, Allen will be twiddling his thumbs a little bit longer on draft day.

So maybe Allen isn’t picked after Alabama’s Andre Smith, but he could possibly be a first-day pick if he has a good NFL Combine. And if that’s the case, he will walk out after day one of the draft with enough guaranteed money to fill Sanford Stadium with red and black Jell-O and use it as his private swimming pool.

These players are privileged to be drafted, to suit up and wear another team’s colors, a professional team’s colors. And if Allen falls too low in the draft and doesn’t receive a guaranteed contract, he could still sign somewhere and make a couple hundred thousand on a scout team.

Not bad, huh?

Yeah, OK, so their fingers will lack some collegiate ice. But their pockets will be heavy and deep. They will play professionally with grandeur and grace and hopefully have a great deal of success in the country’s most publicized and popular sport. Not to mention, their certain success gives even more reason for Georgia to wag its tail and bark in order to win recruits over.

Stafford, Moreno and Allen have a chance to kick back and relax in their late 30s and be set for life, with their dream cars parked delicately in the driveway of a gagillion square foot house equipped with batting cages, an aquarium that rivals Sea World and a rooftop helicopter pad.

Stafford, go on and join the “230-pound quarterback with a laser rocket arm” list, and Knowshon, hurdle on into the NFL, on both your legs, no crutches. Do the job you were born to do. You’ve earned it.

Oh, and Asher, please don’t forget about the Jell-O idea.