Remember Christian Brown? Yup, in the transfer portal too
- Thread starter Jeff_Hauser
- Start date
I heard how "soft" the military was when I was in 15 years ago. These old guys that maybe did 1 year in Vietnam or 6 months in Kuwait and otherwise had a 20 year peaceful career thought we were weak because we PT'd differently and believed in diversity and inclusion.
Then my generation had guys with 5-6 combat deployments (or 10+ if you were special operations like I was) to Iraq and Afghanistan or who did 18 straight months in Mosul.
"Kids are soft these day" has been around forever and it's not even limited to sports. Go back to Roman times and you'll find the same moral panic. Yet each generation has its own virtues and achievements. Kids today are growing up in an era with routine gun violence in their schools, declining job prospects, costs of health education and housing that vastly outpace inflation, and now 2 decades plus of war. They're anything but soft.
Yep
It’s what soft old people say to make themselves feel tough
And now we know most of those guys weren’t very good in the first place, having failed to make a a mark at their first program.
Transfers are useful to fill missing pieces or roles on established teams. They aren’t the solution to systemic problems with a program.
Unless you are NC State or Musselman, who make livings off of transfers.
I don’t know much about Musselman’s program and how he is building it, but if you consider what NCSU is doing to be successful, I don’t know what to tell you. That program sucks.
Your costs to attend most Ivy League schools is based on income so unless your parents make a lot of money your on a free ride . I’d guarantee you most bb and Fb players are on a free ride .
Adding to that if their parents aren’t happy, the player just switches AAU teams and plays for a new AAU team the next weekend. I actually think that’s a major contributor to this entitlement issue.
After coaching a lot of kids my experience has been if you come across a kid who is an a-hole, there's an a-hole parent close by. In the last 5 years, I have had to deal with maybe only 2 parents/kids that fits that description. The others show up every day and work at their given sports harder and more diligently than anyone from previous generations. Quite frankly they know if they don't do that today- they won't be playing.
Regarding trophies- I have 2 kids who will be college athletes. They and their teammates don't place any value on trophies or medals. They don't display or even keep them for that matter. It's photo opp and nothing more.
I'll go one further. Coaches who change without being fired should have to sit out a year and not be permitted to coach; games or practices.
This is really well said. In high school, the kids who were the biggest egomaniacs almost always had parents who constantly told them and everyone else how naturally talented they were while failing to emphasize the importance of hard work.
Now, is it possible parents are more actively involved in their kids' lives than they were 40 years ago? I wouldn't be surprised. I think there are clear advantages and disadvantages to this level of involvement. But I also think the parents aren't entirely at fault. Once again, the system incentivizes this behavior. There are fewer fallback options than there once were for kids who aren't stellar students or athletic enough to possibly play in the pros, and no parent wants to see their child fall through the cracks.
Last edited:
Very good points. For those who have coached youth, the kids are seldom the problem, it’s the parents who think their kid is going pro.
While cash to players is a benefit, so is free education.
I believe the benefit should be free lifetime education. If they flame out in the NBA (or NFL), they can come back at any time and improve their stock / skill set in whatever endeavor.
I mean, isnt that what colleges are in the business of? Educating people?
Kids today know asking dad about school work is silly and they need to be asking Uncle Google.
Agree with this. Giving participation trophies to kids who are bad athletes isn't the problem, it's babying and blowing smoke up the butts of the kids who are great athletes and would have the chance to actually accomplish something if they learned to work hard.
Agree. My two kids who are now in their late 20s had shelves full of trophies. A few years ago I asked them to go through them and keep any they wanted. They only kept a few that were important to them like when they won a championship or a tournament when they were not expected to win.
We were saying the same thing. I dont remember doing geometry until 5th or 6th
I wonder if that generation DID get participation trophies which caused the blowback against them. Because nobody does that anymore. Heck, my kid's team finished 2nd in a pretty large rec baseball league tournament and they didnt even get a trophy.
And schools that fire a coach go without a coach until the contract expires.
This has to go both ways.
No way a school wants a coach there who doesn't want to be there. They could just tank the team.
Sometimes, the kids jumping teams aren't the problem either.
In AAU and other Travel Ball, you still see a lot of "Daddy Ball" where the coach or assistants have kids playing on the teams.
They are there in order to ensure their kids are highlighted, sometimes at the expense of other kids who are better or are made to play out of position because their best position is held by a coaches kid.
Even HS is tainted a bit because sadly a lot of people on school boards are there to influence coaching sports! Big boosters kids buy opportunities as well.
It was probably better when we were kids, and parents stayed away from coaching sports. The town drunks usually handled that!
Of course, back then, there wasn't so much $$$ riding on sports either.
Roberto Clemente only made $100,000/year, and people screamed about that!
