It wasn’t long ago that for a college football player, playing in a bowl game meant suiting up one more time, regardless of the prestige of the bowl game. College basketball players used to aspire to make it to the NCAA Tournament, but if they failed, the NIT was still an excellent competitive tournament to play in, and it meant playing with the team one more time, sometimes in front of a home crowd.
Today, college football bowl games and the NIT don’t matter. All that matters is the big championship; it’s not worth playing any other game if it can’t be obtained.
It’s easy to point a finger at the athletes and blame them for their attitude and disregard for the opportunity to play. Yes, some blame does need to go on the players, but maybe it’s time we take a step back and see what else and who else shares some of the blame.
Young Youth Sports Have Become Full-Time Jobs
In high school in 2009, I ran a 4:49 mile at the Arkansas High School Indoor Meet, which was good enough to have me finish 10th place overall in the 4A-6A division. My training consisted primarily of running 4-6 miles a day, lifting 2-3 times per week, and eating somewhat healthy. I now coach in Arkansas, and this year, I was shocked as I watched the indoor mile have 28 runners in that same division run faster times than I ran just 15 years ago.
Today, for my runners to be competitive, they must run 6-8 miles daily, lift four times per week, follow a strict diet plan, cross-train, stretch longer, and focus primarily on one or two events rather than just being a “distance runner.”
Youth sports have become so competitive that many runners get burned out. But that is the cost of winning. I’ve coached nine state championship teams as a coach, but I sometimes wonder if it is all worth it because I see many kids who love running who get burned out when they are juniors or seniors.
This isn’t just happening in Arkansas track but in youth sports everywhere. For kids to be elite, they start training at 5-6 years old on travel teams. Gone are the days of being able to play rec league, toss a football around in the yard, and expect to be named the starting QB by the time a kid reaches high school. Getting to that point takes thousands of hours of training, driving around the country, and playing in tournaments every weekend.
Long gone are the days of enjoying a weekend. To be elite, and hope to play college football, basketball, or any pro sport, it’s been a full-time job starting sometimes at six years old or younger. Is it wrong? Absolutely. But nothing will change because it is what it now takes to get to that level, and parents and coaches will do what they must to to keep up.
The Media Says It’s Championship of Bust at the College Football, Basketball Level
Turn on ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS Sports, or any other channel that carries a game during the college football season and count how many times a promo or announcer mentions the Playoff/NCAA Tournament. Now count the number of times they mention the Independence Bowl, Holiday Bowl, or the NIT. I can tell you right now that the score will be about 100-1 (if that).
Kids are being taught that there is no point if they don’t make the Championship tournament because nobody cares.
Imagine being at work and being told that if your team reaches a specific goal over a year, they will be eligible to compete for an all-inclusive cruise. The second-place team will get a chance to compete for a weekend stay at the local Holiday Inn. There are posters promoting the cruise all year, and some even say things like “Don’t come just short, or you’ll be at the Holiday Inn.” When the results come out at the end of the year, your team comes up just short and is told, “It’s okay; you can still compete for the next week to try to get this awesome weekend getaway!”
Do you think your team will want to work another week for that after being openly mocked? Of course not. Had the weekend getaway been promoted as a great second-place prize, maybe there would have been some motivation there, but because only the cruise was pushed, and since promotions were mocking finishing second, who cares?
The SAME THING happens with the NIT and non-playoff bowl games. I’ve heard commentators and announcers openly mock teams like Alabama when they lose, saying, “They may get stuck in the Outback Bowl,” or losing a conference tournament game would “Push them to the outside and the NIT.” Why would any program or player who has worked their entire lives to receive a chance at glory want to be part of that?
Money, Money, Money
Money runs college football and sports in general more than ever. We see this at every level, from Middle School to college football to the NFL and the NBA. The risk of injury or the lack of financial compensation makes specific games/opportunities not worth it for athletes. Again, going back to my job, we hosted a Powder Puff game last September, and some coaches forbade their athletes from playing because of the risk of getting hurt, which for many of the athletes would risk their college/NIL opportunities post-high school.
What are we doing?!
I don’t blame these individual coaches because there was a lot of parental pressure, and other schools in the area do the same, but we have to let kids be kids. But at the same time, so much money is being put into these kids, and so much money is now surrounding athletes, that for a player deciding whether to play in a bowl game, Pro Bowl, or NIT matchup, the risk of getting hurt isn’t worth the risk of suiting up and playing.
Playing For the Fun of the Game is Gone
I’ve talked with hundreds of athletes at every level, and many say the same thing: there is so much strategy and training involved now; sports are no longer a fun game; they are just a big game of analytics. No offense to any mathematicians out there, but analytics aren’t that fun for most of us. Spending hours watching high school game films to learn which angles and how to expose a certain player’s tendencies isn’t fun; it’s a job. Spending 40+ hours a week being told how to train, eat, sleep, stretch, mediate, and study isn’t fun, it’s a job.
Basketball players now spend hours focusing on the arc of their shot or the angle of hitting the backboard from different spots on the court rather than just shooting shots. Football receivers spend more time on agility drills and reading a safety than running routes or catching a ball.
The only part of sports that is still fun is winning. And these players are being told that there is only one way to win: to win a National Championship.
So, can we blame college football and basketball players
for not wanting to play when that is out of reach?