due also to anxiety disorders, scads of missed classes, and drug use, quit football and dropped out of school.
Still, the Oakland Raiders—Marv had once been the team’s strength and conditioning coach—picked Todd in the first round of the 1990 NFL draft, and he signed a $2.25 million contract. But by then his lifetime of football genetic engineering must’ve caused some kind of synapse misfire.
And, after a shaky start to his pro career, it quickly became clear that both (A) his less-than-stellar skill set, which was often hidden by the potent USC offensive system and (B) his off-field partying lifestyle, were astoundingly ill-suited to the NFL level. He finally snapped, left football for good, and spiraled down a rabbit hole of drugs, booze, and arrests. And can you blame him? He was the Danny Bonaduce of sports: a freckle-faced, rambunctious child prodigy who finally just. Had. Enough.
So while I will never, ever push Harper that way, if she does end up being a tad more gifted in a certain sport or activity than other kids, and those kids’ parents subsequently try to curtail or ostracize her for being too good or too dedicated, honestly, I can’t promise you that I won’t hurl a chair at them.
Because as I get ready to dive headfirst into this strange, fascinating, somewhat frightening subculture known as Youth Sports, I don’t like the direction in which we appear to be recklessly careening.
I fear that in twenty years, Harper could end up being like those Gen-Y kids at whom Human Resources managers often marvel these days—the ones who throw indignant tantrums when they don’t get a job they want, or whose parents call to harangue bosses because little Sally or Jimmy feels invalidated or rejected or unchallenged at work.
I can just see my little girl now. It’s the year 2030. She’s twenty-four-years-old, just out of college, job-hunting, and collect calling me from her apartment (that, hopefully, I’m not paying for).
Harper: Why didn’t they hire me, daddy? Why?!
Me: Because even though you’re the smartest, sweetest, most beautiful little girl in the world, there were a hundred other applicants for that job, right?
Harper: Yeah…but I wanted it! I showed up for the interview! I should get the job for just showing up, right?!
Me: Uh, not really, hon’—there are no certificates of participation in real life. You don’t get a ribbon just for having a central nervous system and opposable thumbs.
Harper: Can you or mommy call them for me?
Me: Yeaaaaaah, not gonna happen.
Harper: Why not?
Me: Because that’d be certifiably insane.
Harper: So what do I do, daddy?
Me: Well, sweetie, do what I did in Little League, when Scott Lodgek kept striking me out. Just dust yourself off, get back up to bat, and…
Harper: Oh, gawwwwwwd, not the home run story again!
Me: (pause) Guess I’ve told you that one before, huh. Daddy’s senile now, honey. And a tad incontinent.
And so on and so forth…
Maybe I’m oversimplifying. Maybe this newest generation won’t destroy the world, which would be awfully nice of them. But I just worry that we’re launching a massive armada of kids who have been so coddled, hyper-validated, over-hugged, and under-challenged in this nationwide Self-Esteem Building initiative that they get out into the real world and, like Red in “Shawshank Redemption” (and Brooks before him), just can’t cope, having been institutionalized in their bubble worlds for so long.
Not that I’m advocating putting our children into the MMA octagon after starving them for two days, tossing in a stick of string cheese and a juice box and watching them fight to the death (although I’m sure that was the next phase of entertainment at Mike Vick’s house).
I just find it troubling that we seem to be creating an entire generation who doesn’t quite understand the concept of losing because, in that safe, insulated bubble world, losing doesn’t exist. There’s no learning to get back up when you’re knocked down. There’s no truly savoring victory because defeat, in its truest sense, is not even an option.
Which brings us back to the whole apocalypse thing. Someday, these kids—maybe even my little 4-year-old Harper—will be running the world. She might even be, say, President. And she’ll inevitably think that her executive decision to continue the top secret genetic experiments at Atlanta’s Center for Disease Control is a sound one, as was her signing of that amendment to add a super-duper-futuristic-high-powered version of a nuclear facility right next door to the CDC.
And since her cabinet—peers who also grew up with bizarre mercy rules and incessantly coddled self-esteem—will have been woefully untrained in the art of challenging someone else’s opinion, no matter how moronic, for fear of invalidating that person, everyone will simply nod and smile and go off to Tweet about only positive things, ignoring the fact that nuclear power and genetic experiments are probably not the best neighbors.
So when the inevitable happens (core meltdown, exploding drainage pipes, escaped mutants, human race devoured and/or enslaved, nuclear winter, locusts, pestilence, Old Testament, Cormac McCarthy, et cetera), I hope you remember this little screed and recall that I pre-placed the blame squarely on the egregious wussification of sports.
Particularly, on that one dad-turned-referee who blew his whistle after the shameful “five goal lead” goal, stopped the soccer game, and automatically awarded the win… to the losing team.
♦ ♦ ♦
Mark St. Amant’s essay “The Not-So-Dolce Vita”, a humorous look at a newlywed couple’s struggle to stay married while in a foreign land, appears in The Good Men Project: Real Stories from The Front Lines of Modern Manhood. On sale here. Want to learn more? Here you go.
Wait, are you remembering correctly? Scott Lodgek sounds an awful lot like Randy Johnson, down to the horrible facial hair. Was Lodgek left-handed?…. ; – ) I don’t understand what the team that’s up by 4 goals is supposed to do under this new mercy rule. This makes no sense in terms of competitiveness. Under that rule, as the leading coach I would just pull all of the forwards back to play defense, to avoid any accidental offensive production that could cost me the game! So, now the pitied team has to play against, what, 10 defenders instead of 5?… Read more »
I think the outrage over not keeping score and handing out participation trophies for little kids’ sports is one of the more comical blips on our cultural landscape. If anyone can persuasively argue that one of the great empires of history was laid low by little kids’ participation trophies, well, go ahead. My guess is that the Romans were simply relieved anytime a youngster reached his/her fifth birthday. “Wussification” was a later, secondary concern. I’ll second the argument that we should not assume that organized sports are good. My dad did not once suggest that I participate in something like… Read more »
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Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. That’s the point of pieces like this, and of this entire magazine: to start and ongoing (and, if possible, coherent) discussion. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to a piece about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s sudden & hypocritical wussification of pro football via his new anti-“illegal”-hit policy…
I was raised by a father who was more of a coach than a breadwinner. He was a real life high school coach and brought his work home. I used to say “we’re not a family we’re a team”. The training began young in hockey, skiing and swimming. My two brothers and I started in each sport at about age 5 but as we grew older became stars in our own rights in one of them. I was the swimmer. There was no swim team for me to join in the town I grew up in so dad just enrolled… Read more »
Consider the possibility that we’re all looking at this the wrong way, or should I say (so nobody will be offended) through a different lens. The issue, rather than the wussification of youth sports, is the organization of youth sports by adults. Games, for children age 4/5/6 are meant to be games of imagination, trial and error, naturally occuring, with intense physical, emotional skill development. The beauty of soccer is…put a gaggle of kids on a field with a ball and it happens naturally. Let em play, run around, keep score, do whatever comes naturally. Lets take the “organized” out… Read more »
My solution is to just get your sons involved with boy scouts instead of sports. They’re never going to be professional athletes anyway!
I played Little League baseball for one season, the summer of 1963. We lost our first game … a fielding error of mine led to us getting clobbered. We hung our heads and slunk off the field as best we could. Every single day of the next week we held practice … 2-3 hours at a whop until our tongues stuck to our lips and we were near to passing out. We went home when we had to go home. Not before. There were no adults anywhere near. We never lost another game in regular season and swept the playoffs… Read more »
I said it when they banned aluminum bats in little league and I’ll say it now; It’s a competition. A game. There will be winners and there will be losers. As long as the rules are applied equally, it’s as fair as it’s going to get. Some kids are bigger, stronger and faster. Get over it. I signed my son up for football in a Pop Warner league as soon as he was old enough. He ended up playing as the quarterback on a team that was, on average, shorter and younger than every other team in the league. During… Read more »
Let’s see – go down by 5 goals and win the game. My team can win the league by scoring 5 goals on ourselves and none on the other team. Or we go down by 3 goals, pull the defense and goalie because if they score 2 more goals on us we win. They try to play keep away from us and not score a 5th goal on us. How humiliating! I agree that at certain ages and levels participation should be celebrated. At later stages, it is what it is. I have been on teams where we were mercy… Read more »
“…there will be a therapist in every dugout. If you strike out you’ll lay down on the bench and tell the counselor how it makes you feel.”
LOL or ROFL or LMAO, as the kids say, Daddy Files. Well put. If the world hasn’t exploded by then, the frightening scenario above, surely, will be a given.
Mark, Bravo. Loved this column. And it is spot on. I hate all this “everyone wins” crap. I remember being 6 years old on my first baseball team. No one kept score. Officially that is. All of the kids kept score in their heads though and everyone knew who won. When I got older I played on the all star team every summer from 8-12 years old. And we were pushed. Hard. Too hard at times, but parents would step in when Coach got out of hand and in the end it made me a better player. And taking a… Read more »
Roger, you nailed it. Has to be a balance. But of the two, I find having to do math during the heat of sports “battle” far more offensive than two drunk dads fighting in the stands. Kidding. But seriously, I hate math.
Well done Mark! I couldn’t agree more. I think there has to be more of a balance. We have to teach kids that life is, or should be, a meritocracy. This Canadian mercy rule is literally insane. So now if a kid has an open net, he has to quickly do the math in his head–“wait, if I score, this will be our 5th goal and we’ll lose and we won’t get to go to McDonalds after…” so he shoots the ball wide of the net. This is encouraging incompetence for kids now, and in the future when the Mercy… Read more »
Tom I’ve taken the offensive and created a competition club in my neighborhood. We are feeling our way around at the moment, but you know my background in men’s workshops and I had a very very full life of rugby, baseball, cricket, baseball, Canadian football all the way to professional and golf. Believe it or not I was a horrible skater so no ice hockey. It took years of therapy to get over that shortfall!! I have three other men interested and we already have meetings scheduled with local clubs and schools and we are looking to understand how to… Read more »
Mark yes Seamus and I were sitting at breakfast this morning before hitting the weights and then timed 40s in the street (we did 7 and I actually beat him twice–which is quite an accomplishment for an old man even though I had a deal with my 5 year old son who was our started that gave me a jump) talking about his need to fill out his frame. I suggested protein shakes. He recalled Rocky’s raw eggs and cringed. We both decided hard work was plenty for now. On the comments about this article not belonging on the site,… Read more »
Here is my take on the “wuss” factor that seems to be missing from the conversation….Parents (adults if you can call them such) I served for a season as “commissioner” of a local T-Ball league in central Ohio some years back. These are 5-6-7 year old’s that are barely out out of diapers and are gawky to say the least. When I got the records for the last season I discovered: **All the little girls were stacked to one team **Coaches could recruit other fathers as assistant coaches to stack all the talent on one or two teams **score cards… Read more »
And by “moronic ones, I mostly mean my own.
Robert, thanks, glad you enjoyed the books. I’d love to have Simmons’ bank account, at least, but not sure whether your comment is a compliment to me or an insult to him. Doubt I’ll have time for regular blogging, but hope to contribute pieces here & elsewhere as much as possible, whenever I can. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for all the comments, everyone, kind and otherwise. This is exactly what I was hoping to do: get a discussion going about this Youth Sports craziness. I don’t even remotely pretend that I have all the answers here, so it’s great to hear all the points of view. Hey, look at that — I just validated everyone’s opinions! Even the moronic ones! 😉
Mark,
Besides timing and marketing, what is the difference between you and Bill Simmons?
After reading your books long ago, its great to get to read some of your work again.
Start doing regular blog entries and build a following (while writing that next book). Followers will buy it.
HUGE shout out to Mark! This is a great piece. I laughed out loud a number of times while reading his piece on the train, to which those around me shot me discerning looks as if to say, “yep we knew he was crazy.” I’m all for kids enjoying sports and benefiting from all that organized sports offers — teamwork, friendship, skill development, etc., but if I hear one more time that it’s only about having “fun” and not winning I seriously think I’ll lose my nut. When did winning become a negative? No, for all those people gasping in… Read more »
Sorry Joe, but I disagree. While I agree all kids should have a shot at playing sports, you don’t “dumb down” the level of play to satisfy the less-talented kids. That would be akin to using words with no more than 5 letters in the spelling bee to make the not-so-smart kids feel better about themselves. I think there are sensible things you can do to promote good sportsmanship (such as reducing your score when you exceed the slaughter threshold), but otherwise, sports is like life–not everyone wins!
This is not the kind of article I would expect to find, let alone be featured, on the Good Men Project website. The term “wuss” is systematically used to negate male sensitivity and emotion, and is inherently sexist as it is most often used to demean behavior considered feminine, like crying or being in love. Youth sports are designed to improve children’s physical health, self esteem, and teamwork skills. Kids don’t need any more reminders that life isn’t fair, that some people will be considered “better” than them. Instead they need to be reminded that everyone has different talents in… Read more »
Hi. Good article. a few things: – Don’t worry too much about the everyone-gets-a-trophy thing… it only lasts a few years, and it encourages the little dudes to keep going. As the parent of a now 19-year-old daughter, who played soccer for 15 of those years, I can say that some of the trophies she got when she was little are super important to her now, – 5 point lead and you forfeit… that’s not cool. Our league rules are: once you get an 8pt lead, they start counting backwards (-1) for each goal. works great. Best wishes for a… Read more »
Like Marinovich, I’ve read about elite athletes like Tiger Woods and Andre Agassi receiving hand/eye training from their fathers in the crib (!). Like science projects. I’ve also read that Tiger and Andre never felt that they had lived up to their fathers’ expectations. I’m thinking that if Tiger had been allowed to mature naturally — maybe play some basketball, ping pong, skateboard — and he wasn’t introduced to a golf ball until he was 16, he would still be Tiger Woods. Same power, same concentration, same ability, same package. Maybe he’d even have avoided his current personal crisis (I… Read more »