Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #31 🥃
Youth Sports Specialization, Melons, & The Media
QUICK HITTERS:
The Athena melon has made its way back to Wisconsin. Larger, sweeter, and softer than a traditional cantaloupe, this fruit is only available here for about a month. Keep an eye out for them if you’ve never tried one, they are AMAZING!
I had the same response to seeing these as Kramer did to the Mackinaw Peaches. This week’s book recommendation is Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Originally published in 1988, I think it is uniquely pertinent these days. In short, it talks about how our mainstream media does not do a good job of educating the public. Rather, they do a great job of propagating the viewpoint of corporate and government interests. Not through ill intent, but in essence because of how these structures have been built over the course of their development.
Resorted to treats this week to get the little naughty man to pose. Yes, those are hot dogs on his collar…happy almost 4th of July!! Earlier this week on the SilentPunt Podcast (here), Travis and I discussed four topics as usual. In the last topic, Iran, we talked about our government using military action as a distraction. A day after we taped the show, I came across this article discussing Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.
.
Why does it seem that no one in the media seems to call things like this out? The answer, I believe, lies in my previous book recommendation.
.
So maybe, just maybe, the next time you are drawn to rail on how awful Trump is (or how horrible the woke Democrats are), you take a deep breath and consider that both sides are terrible. As long as we as individuals allow our elected officials to trick us into fighting amongst ourselves, we won’t see the grift staring us all in the face.
Because of all of this, I’ve really needed to laugh lately. Hopefully, this week’s GOING DEEP makes you chuckle, and maybe think a little as well.
GOING DEEP:
Your Child Should Totally Specialize in Sports
If you follow sports or are a parent of children who participate in them, you’ve likely heard the calls to end specialization at young ages.
Evan has to quit football at the age of 10 so that he can be on the year-round travel baseball team.
Emma is forced to give up softball because her dance team practices four nights a week, every month of the year.
We’re told these specializations harm kids on multiple levels.
First and foremost, they rob them of the opportunity to participate in activities that would bring them more joy, even if they suck at them.
Second, specialization increases the risk of overuse injuries caused by the repeated motions used in one particular sport. Severely jeopardizing their .00001% chance of obtaining a scholarship in that sport.
And lastly, they prevent them from meeting and engaging with new friends from different social and economic backgrounds. Forcing them to engage solely with the same group of friends (with the exact same interests as them), completely via Snapchat, TikTok, & Instagram.
“You want me to do what? Talk to them? Eww, no, that’s weird.”
____________________
The rationale above is repeated over and over by high-level athletes, coaches, and the media. But here’s the thing: LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes didn’t make it to be the best in the world at what they do because they played multiple sports.
They did so in spite of it.
Because they are awesome.
They are the best of the best, and have been that way since they first wobbled their way onto a field as toddlers. They are the types of athletes who show up for a sport they’ve never even heard of and, by the end of the day, are running circles around the rest of the competition.
Your child is not LeBron.
Heck, he’s not even Bronny.
So I say specialize away.
Do you know the name Mark Moseley? Most likely, you don’t. Believe it or not he was the MVP of the entire NFL in 1982….as the kicker for the Washington Redskins.
The kicker.
That season, he converted 20 of his 21 field goal attempts. Take a guess at how far his longest attempt was?
48 yards.
Kickers today routinely make 50+ yard field goals every game. The final two field goals Moseley hit that season, to secure the record for highest make percentage, were 20 and 31 yards, respectively.
That is shorter than an extra point in today’s game1.
Oh, and speaking of extra points, in that ‘82 season he missed three of them. Back when those were only 20-yard chip shots.
Why has kicking improved so much? The same reason runners run faster. And swimmers swim faster. And pitchers throw harder.
Specialization.
But more importantly, the specialization of elite athletes.
So, I say pay for the pitching coach, the visualization expert, and the stretching guru. Drive your kids all over the country, spend thousands on hotels, fancy uniforms, and personalized travel bags.
It’ll all be worth it someday.
When you are paying $80,000 a year for them to attend college and play on the intramural frisbee golf team.
Several years ago the NFL made extra points longer.
Hey, nice issue, as usual. Not disagreeing with your take on sport specialization, but I thought I would share my experience. I was a wrestling coach for 25 years. My school was a top ranked academic high school with white collar families and professionals. Not a blue collar background that often makes for a good wrestling team. We would typically have five or so good wrestlers, but not a full team of them. I would try to recruit athletes from other sports. But when a good baseball player goes up against a specialist wrestler, it is a bloodbath. Good athletes were humiliated by good wrestlers. We would field a team of part-timers to go up against a school of full-timers and get shellacked. It made it hard to field a team.
In a different experience, my son was a full-time soccer player. His whole team was. A non-specialist had no chance to make his team. So, for your own kid, I agree go ahead and specialize. But for the good of high school sports as a whole, specialization is making it tough to have a traditional program.
Thank you for your fun and so true takes on specialization!