Where are the Adults?
February 2, 2016
According to Jim Tucker, a certified financial planner and National Football League Players Association registered player financial advisor, writing for the Jan. 11-17 issue of Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal: “... university presidents, trustees and athletic directors are failing at their job of upholding the ethical standards of their universities.” They exploit, rather than educate, the so-called “student-athlete.”
He asks the right questions: “Where are the adults at our colleges and universities? Where are the adults to say no to football games on a day other than Saturday? Where are the adults to say no to athletic conferences that crisscross the country? Or adults to say no to a 35-plus-game college basketball season with excessive travel and missed class time?”
Behind the glitz and glamor of major college athletics is a program without, it appears, any rudder but the pursuit of more revenue, and less and less relationship to the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions.
I wouldn’t care about this. Except that the best predictor of what may go wrong in school sports is a look at what already has gone awry in college sports.
Those who pressure school sports to copy the college or AAU model miss the lessons that are all around us. We do not have to make the same mistakes.
Pivot Work
September 21, 2011
Consider the pivot move in basketball. The player receives the ball, plants his or her foot and spins 90 to 180 degrees. Without moving the pivot foot, the player turns from facing one direction to facing a different direction. And with that new perspective, the player either passes the ball to a cutting teammate or dribble drives toward the goal.
If these are pivotal times in school sports – and I believe they are – we must, if we are to make the most of these times, remember the skills that many of us worked on when we played basketball and still often admire as effective when we watch basketball. The pivot.
- One foot firmly planted. A foot that can’t be moved. Our base. Our fixed orientation.
- Then the spin that changes our field of vision from one direction to another.
- Then a sharp pass to a teammate, one who’s gotten a step on an opponent.
- Or, if no teammate is open to receive our assist, a determined drive of our own toward the goal.
If these are pivotal times, and if we are to be the “pivotal generation,” this is the drill: Fixed to our core beliefs, look around for new ideas and cutting edge partners to assist, and take it to the goal ourselves if we must.