Seize The Day, Or Seize the Future?

Not too long ago, within 18 months, four NFL football players under the age of 30 voluntarily left the game.  The one that generated the most attention, and the one that is the focus of this article is Chris Borland, former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and Wisconsin Badgers.  At age 24 he made what all people agree was an informed decision to leave the game and occupation that was the focal point of his life.  From a personal perspective, I could not stand Chris Borland as he wrecked havoc on my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers, contributing to some beat-downs that were hard for this Big Red fan to stomach!  But that said, I have had tremendous respect for the way this under-sized, gritty, hard-nosed guy played.  He was a “player’s player” and that kind of guy that chewed leather and spit nails!  He was what you you think of when you think football player.

The average career of NFL football players is about 3.3 years, according the the NFL Players Association.  Most leave because they are replaced by better players or due to injuries.  Borland hadn’t even reached the average.  Every player that reaches the NFL is fulfilling a dream.  The odds are .09% that a high school football player is going to reach that level.  Borland made it, and after one season, at the age of 24, he made the decision to step aside.  He didn’t leave the game because he couldn’t do it any more.  Nor was it because of an injury that he had suffered.  The reason Chris Borland made this decision is because of the potential long-term consequences of playing the game.  More specific, he left because of the consequences that so many players have suffered due to head injuries.  Chris Borland wants to live a normal life when he is in his 60’s, and he stands a better chance of doing so by stepping away from a game that he loves, and a job that he performs very well.

Borland did a significant amount of research before making this decision, even after recognizing the concussion numbers were down 25% in the previous year in professional football.  He also made this decision knowing that he was going to leave millions of dollars of salary behind.  Most players come into the league with the plan to make as much money as you possibly can for as long as you are able to play.  And if you make enough, and invest it wisely, you won’t have to learn how to do something else to survive the rest of your life.  The problem with that thinking is that most players do not get that many years to reap these crazy salaries, and a very large percentage of them do not invest wisely.  What is significant is that they have 20 to 30 productive years left in their life are left to find some other way to earn an income.  Many of them struggle a great deal with this, and if they are suffering from an accumulation of injuries, it makes it much more difficult.

Borland made a decision that is also different than most of his generational peers.  Being a member of the iY generation, short-term or instant gratification is the common decision making model.  But Borland broke the model, recognizing that choosing short-term benefits often lead to long-term consequences.  He could bank a lot of money before he turns 30, but at what risk?  Rather, he chose to pursue other parts of his life, relying on a college degree that he earned and setting out on a path that will hopefully provide him and opportunities to enjoy his kids and grandkids.  Rather than “seize the day,” he has chosen to “seize the future."

Borland is not alone in this thinking.  Rashard Mendenhall, former Pittsburg Steeler running back, stepped away from the game at the age of 26.  “There is another life apart from football, and you can be happy.  You can still work.”  Mendenhall is seizing the future as well.

Football is the example here, and it would be unfair to not note that the game at some levels is getting safer due changes made in the game and rules.  But when you look at a profession where so many workers have come out scarred for life, it serves as a perfect model to use about decision making.  In all of our lives there are those things that look too good to be true.  Make money fast!  Instant wealth!  Take a risk!  There are those among us that choose careers only because we want to bank money as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk.  But it appears that our grandparents generation, those that lived through he depression, taught us all very valuable lessons.  Good things tend to come to those who wait, and putting of immediate gratification often leads to the ability to enjoy something much greater down the road.  Kudos the Chris Borland for making a very tough decision, and here’s to a long and happy life!

Why Americans Have a Problem With Soccer

Soccer has become a passion of mine.  I get up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to watch two or three games live from England and the Barclay’s Premier League, considered the strongest professional soccer league in the world.  I have become a fan of Everton, West Ham United, and Manchester City.  I was all in for the World Cup in 2014, and last October I stayed up watching an incredibly thrilling U.S. vs. Mexico CONCACAF game to determine what national team would be playing in the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia.  While a bitter and disappointing loss for the U.S., it was truly an incredible game!

This has not become an overnight passion for me.  Both of my kids played youth soccer and really enjoyed it.  Given the opportunity I am certain both would have played in high school.  As a fan I got the bug watching them and started watching games on television.  But I am also a sports fan, and I love watching competition at the highest level, so I was watching the World Cup when the United States hosted back in 1994, and players like Alexi Lalas and Tab Ramos were becoming recognizable figures on the national sports scene.  And of course, I watched a number of women’s games culminating with Brandi Chastain’s winning penalty shot to defeat China in the 1999 World Cup.

In the summer of 2015, I just happened into an opportunity I did not see coming.  During a trip planned for Montreal, my wife and I attended the semi-final game of the Women’s World Cup between the United States and Germany.  It was the first international sporting event that I attended, and it was an incredible experience to watch the American women defeat the Germans.  I can’t describe the feeling of being in that stadium.  It was incredible!  And it only deepen my new-found love for the sport of futbol!

Yet it was at this World Cup game that my wife stated,  “This is why I have a problem with soccer.  The U.S. outplayed the Germans in the first half, dominating the game, and yet had not scored.  All the Germans have to do is get lucky and get a goal and they win.  It isn’t fair.”  Perhaps there is a lot of truth to this, and maybe it is a reason that it has yet to become as popular in our country as other sports.  The issue of scoring has a lot to do with it, but that isn’t much different from baseball.  So maybe it is a matter of fairness. 

Americans subscribe to the philosophy that if you work hard, you get rewarded.  Some recognize that there is a little luck involved, but more often than not, we resent those people that get rewards without paying their dues. It goes back to the Puritan work ethic that shaped a lot of the early value systems in our nation.  "Hard work has its rewards" has been professed for generations, and in the work place it has been rewarded with promotions and wage increases. Productivity is a goal and those that produce best are valued.  In the sports world we often hear athletes and coaches say “no one will outwork us,” and there are instances where that has certainly been true.  During the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling dynasty created by Dan Gable no other team of that era worked as hard, and the success of those great teams speaks to that effort.  Work ethic has been the difference maker between people of equal talent, and the equalizer for the individual that does not have as much.

Giving more merit to this argument is my experience watching that U.S. vs. Mexico game.  It was tied at the end of regulation and went to two 15 minute overtime periods.  Had it remained tied, it would have gone to penalty kicks.  However, it didn’t get to that point because the Mexicans scored the winner in overtime and prevented the U.S. from scoring the equalizing goal.  And you know what, it would have been a shame if the Americans had tied it and somehow gone on to win.  Why?  Because the Mexican team totally dominated the game from start to finish and deserved to win.  It wouldn’t have been fair!

So what about luck and opportunity?  I guarantee that had the U.S. somehow won that game, American futbol fans would have gone crazy, celebrating like wild in the Rose Bowl and in bars all over the country where fans were gathered watching the game.  But would they have deserved it, and does that matter?  Hey, a win is a win, and with a few exceptions, there are no style points!  The funny thing is that for many of us we want to know that we deserved the victory.  Fairness implies that the game is played by rules and that the best prevails.  To some real sportsmen victories are shallow when the opponent is less than 100%.  They want to measure themselves against the best in order to have a satisfying victory.  It’s kind of the same in terms of luck.  How satisfying is it to win when a referee blatantly blows a call, or when something “unfair” happens that tilts the table?  It’s not, at least to many who value hard work and the dividends that it provides.  The question that I ponder and will leave you with is does hard work matter any more, or does luck, opportunity, and possibly even deceit matter just as much or more so?  Is that the message behind the game of soccer?  Work really hard for an entire game, fight the good fight, yet lose because of a fluke when a player mistakenly deflects the ball into his own net when trying to clear the ball.  Hey, a wins a win, isn’t it?

Talent Always Trumps Character . . . Or Does It?

This comment, or one similar, is mentioned quite a bit today, especially when people are talking about professional or collegiate athletics.  Maybe high school to an extent as well.  It is a cynical statement because we as Americans like to believe that the good guy is going to win in the end.  We want to believe that good triumphs over evil and that following the rules pays dividends in the end.  Do the right thing!  Even in our history we focus on individuals who do great things and consider them to be great people — for example, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr. — yet we have whitewashed or ignored character flaws, which each of those two gentlemen certainly had.  So what’s the message, and is it changing?

They say that love is blind, but it would appear that our pursuit of wealth, wins, and success has also become blind.  Recent polls of high school and college students show that a majority do not believe it is wrong to cheat.  From a University of Nebraska study a few years back, Professor Kenneth Kierwra shared that "Students generally understand what constitutes cheating, but they do it anyway.  They cheat on tests, homework assignments and when writing reports. In some cases, though, students simply don't grasp that some dishonest acts are cheating.”  Students know that cheating is wrong, yet they still do it.  So it would appear that there is great acceptance of this behavior, and when it comes to character, it is a flaw that some are willing to overlook.

What is happening is that when people overlook these flaws, or other character flaws, the results often are not what one would hope.  There is an old saying that people eventually get what they deserve, and those that bend and break rules, or continue to exhibit poor character will “get what’s coming to them.”  Yet in that quest for the gold ring, people continue to look past them.  Professional and college teams seem to consistently make bad decisions on players when the signs are right there.  Aaron Hernandez is a prime example.  Both the University of Florida and the New England Patriots were so enamored of his athletic skills that they were blinded and in the case of the Patriots, paid him millions of dollars to play football.  And we all know what happened with Hernandez, yet there is so much money in professional football that he has just become a footnote to the Patriots history, overshadowed by their recent Super Bowl victory.

It isn’t just the world of sports or business where character seems to have taken a backseat to getting what people want. How many people have stories about the sacrifices that individuals and families have made for a child to go to college.  I recently heard the story of an individual who received little financial aid to attend a small liberal arts college in Iowa and worked 40-hours a week as a restaurant manager in addition to being a full-time student.  There was a time when parents would pick up second jobs to pay college costs, and also to pay off the debt for loans.  Now, we have people encouraging college students to default on their loans rather than pay them back, contributing to a college loan crisis that has created all kinds of concern for future generations of college students.  

Wall Street scandals and corporate corruption exposed in recent years are other examples where making money has trumped good character.  It is interesting that in our country we will throw a young man in prison for five or six years for selling a couple hundred dollars worth of dope, yet white collar criminals in charge of banks and pharmaceutical companies that have stolen millions and even caused deaths seem untouchable and are able to maintain “their good name."

So the question becomes, do we currently live in an America where winning is more important that doing it the right way?  Do we live in a country where getting what you want is more important than being a good person?  Complicating matters is that we have people that are defining right and wrong in a much more black and white manner, and insisting that if others don’t agree with them, then they are definitively wrong.  Politics is awash with this today, and our country has not been as split as it is today since the Civil War in terms of many of our fundamental beliefs.  There is also tremendous hypocrisy as many politicians and “celebrities” have a public forum to discuss what they believe all the “evils” are, yet they aren’t living lives of character themselves, such as recently “exposed” Congressman Kevin McCarthy and television character Josh Duggar.  

Having good character is tough, and in this day and age everyone is watching.  People are not without their flaws, and yet that isn’t to say it is impossible to overcome them.  What we need to realize is that there is a gamble when it comes to working with people who have character flaws.  There is a risk, and people, businesses, and organizations have to measure the reward and benefit from taking a risk.  At times one has to ask whether the reward outweighs the risk today.

Investing In Our Kids

On July 14, 2014, President Obama tweeted "If we make investments early in our children, we will reduce the need to incarcerate those kids."  I immediately re-tweeted, “Truer words have never been spoken.”  I am still very much a novice tweeter, and I have been somewhat selective as to what I re-tweet as it appears some folks just re-tweet about everything they receive.  I re-tweet things I agree with, or that I think are funny or provocative.  This tweet from the POTUS is not original.  We have heard this said by many people many times before, but at this point in time I truly wonder whether or not it is a common belief.  One would think so, but when one looks around at the current state of affairs in this country, I am concerned.

It seems that investing in our children has become a political football.  In order to appease political supporters and special interest groups, elected officials have continued to cut funding to education throughout the country.  In Iowa, education spending does make up a very large part of the budget, yet legislators are getting away with breaking the law by not allocating funds when they are supposed to, and the Governor gives lip-service to supporting education, but is cherry-picking programs that he values.  There are similar — and worse — stories in other states.  As I write this, Congress is supposedly working to reauthorize the federal bill for education . . . eight years after it was to have been reauthorized.  These examples kind of paint a clear picture where children rank as a national priority.  Note: Congress did reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act in late 2015, eight years after it was due to be reauthorized.

I question whether the generation of parents raising younger kids today are truly investing in raising those kids so that they can be strong, independent contributors to a society.  Half the kids in this country don’t have two parents with them in the house where they reside, with many having absolutely no relationship with the man responsible for them being here.  There are also kids that have two parents in the house they live in, but one wonders how committed the parents are to raising the kids.  This investment is just as important, if not more so, than financial investment.  You don’t need a lot of money to teach children values and morals, or show them love and affection.  There are myriad of troubling statistics about the breakdown of the traditional American family.  The cost is a couple of generations of young people that many are very concerned about.

One aspect of our society that seems to be investing in our children is business and marketing, and I question how healthy that is.  Advertisers and manufacturers have discovered how profitable a market young people are, and thus we have children and young people who have have become quite materialistic.  This has come with a number of related issues where children have been exploited.

The health of a nation is best measure by how it treats its children.  In my opinion it is time for our nation to have a check-up because what I see is an unhealthy environment for a lot of our kids.  We need to pay attention to what President Obama tweeted and it is time for all of us to invest in our nation’s youth.  Otherwise, we will need to invest in our prison system, which is a very expensive alternative.

Is This Why You Sent Your Child To College?

In many ways what I write about in this article runs contrary to my belief system.  However, I find it quite alarming and perhaps it explains some of the concerns that we have about our students that go on to college.  Let’s get the conflicts I have off the table right away.  First of all, I am going to reference a report from the founder of a company that produces an app that parents can purchase to keep an eye on their college-age student.  I am skeptical about a report produced by someone that has something to profit from because of the report.  I don’t trust the authenticity of reports when self-interest is at hand.  Another issue I have is that I also have a problem with big brother watching.  When kids turn 18 and are legally adults, and then go off to college, they are responsible for their lives.  They need to take responsibility for their actions and accept whatever comes their way.  With those two disclaimers out of the way, I still find this very interesting!

Jeff Whorley, founder of a company called Core Principle, contends that “college students spend more than $31 billion a year in classes they don’t attend.”  I have heard adults reminisce about their college days with a few of them joking about skipping out of classes or figuring out what classes they needed to attend and those they didn’t.  In my four-plus years of college I can count on one hand the number of classes I missed.  I guess that it was always drilled into me that you needed to be there.  I also recall a student in a class who complained openly to the professor that she didn’t think she was getting her money’s worth out of the class because he wasn’t setting high enough expectations or teaching us anything, yet she rarely showed up.

In high school we have attendance requirements that include notifying parents when their child has missed a certain number of days or classes.  We have excused and unexcused absences and, and if unexcused there are consequences.  When absences are excessive, we hold meetings and work out plans for improvement.  At North Fayette Valley we consistently average near 95% average daily attendance, and for the vast majority of students, they are able to sustain their level of performance.  But when it comes to college, there are some significant differences.

Again, according to Whorley, “on average, students report that they don’t attend about 20% of classes throughout their collegiate career.”  If that is an average, it is no wonder that the dropout rate at college is so high.  The national statistics have been relatively consistent the past few years with 40 to 45% of students who start out at four-year colleges or universities not graduating in six years.  What a significant failure rate!  The correlation is very strong between those who do not attend and those who do not graduate, and, they don’t get their money back for all of those credit hours, housing, meals, and other things they have paid for.  A lot of money — $31 billion — is thrown away!

The reality is that this happens in Iowa as well.   Statistics from about five years ago showed that for every 100 9th graders that start out in the fall, 83 graduate from high school four years later.  This number is improving, but it is still needs to be better.  Of those 83, 54 immediately enter college, either in a two- or four-year program.  By the end of their second year of school, only 37 of them are still enrolled.  When it comes to graduates, just 28 will earn either an associate’s degree within three years or a bachelor’s degree within six.  For a state that prides itself on education, the reality is that we aren’t doing a very good job once kids are on their own and attending college.

There are some significant differences between being a high school student and a college student.  The amount of freedom and down-time, a need to prioritize, new social opportunities and a host of other things are challenges that a student faces.  Perhaps the biggest is simply standing on one’s own feet and having the ability to make good decisions, and when obstacles emerge, being able to overcome them.  I see college freshmen come running home right away as soon as the first weekend rolls around, and every weekend after that.  They are already wasting precious dollars, as well as opportunities to grow and establish their independence.  Also, keep in mind that once the student turns 18 and is in college, parents cannot access their records without their child’s permission.  Mom and dad cannot check up on them like they did in high school!

So how do we help students stop throwing away money?  Perhaps a contract with parents is a place to start, at least if mom and dad are footing the bill.  You fail a class, you pay for the class.  Maybe something else that would help is to not allow the student to have a car at college.  It is still not uncommon for parents to drop their kids off at college, thus making it extremely difficult to come home every weekend.  Requiring that they break ties and work through the process of developing independence and responsibility may also help them value what is important.  It would also save on fuel costs, leaving more money for the student to pay back mom and dad should they still choose to skip classes!

Social Media and Your Child’s Mental Health

Social media is one of those things that can be very positive and very negative.  What I can tell you is that a very high percentage of our students spend a lot of time on it.  There are some out there that talk about an addiction to smart phones, and I certainly would agree that some students do not know what to do if they don’t have their’s right with them all of the time.  There is a growing segment of our population that is starting to push back against this technology as it becomes all-engrossing to some individuals to the extent that other aspects of their life and personal growth are significantly impacted.

In our school setting, a very large percentage of the behavior issues, and concerns about the emotional well-being of our students, is directly related to social media.  We have reviewed what would be reams of interaction between students if it were all printed out that has caused problems of one kind or another for our students.  It is for that reason that I have sought out information that might be helpful, and one of the reasons that I posed the question to parents about banning cell phones at the high school (which received an overwhelming “No” in the unscientific poll I conducted at Back-To-School-Night).  The article below is one that I found that puts a lot of perspective on the matter of social media and the impact that it has on our kids.  Perhaps you may want to take a look at the rules and expectations you have for your child’s use.   

http://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/adolescents-and-teen-health-news-719/constant-social-media-presence-may-jeopardize-teens-mental-health-703192.html

When Do We Give Youth Sports Back To The Kids?

I would guess that those of you who read this regularly believe that I am spinning a broken record in my “rants” about youth sports.  I don’t bowl, I don’t play cards with the guys on Thursday evenings, I rarely fish and since I don’t own a gun, I don’t hunt.  I don’t tinker on old tractors, don’t snowmobile or play much golf.  I read a lot and I have spent a great deal of my life involved in athletics, and a large amount of that involved at one level or another with youth sports.  If it needs a category in my life, I guess it is my hobby, youth sports that is, not ranting!  Though I am sure there are those of you that think that I do that a lot as well!

I wrote an article a while back about the “dropout rate” among youth athletes in which I pointed out that a very high percentage of kids who play sports when they are young quit playing by the time they reach high school.  80% of the kids playing youth sports in this country right now will not be playing in high school.  In that article I provided information that explained this high “dropout rate” on burnout, injuries, and the stress that comes with meeting the demands of adults.

I believe it is important to take a very close look at the expectations we have for our kids.  Honestly, I think most parents you talk to who have their children playing soccer, softball, football or whatever, state that their number one priority is for their child to have fun.  But I don’t quite buy it.  That’s the response they are supposed to give.  It is the cliché answer.  For many parents, I believe that they are living out their dreams through their kids.  Maybe they didn’t have the level of success they had hoped for when they competed back in the day, or if they competed at all.  Perhaps they are hooked on the fact that sports today offer so many more opportunities than when they were kids that they don’t want to be left out.  I know for some it gives them something to brag on.  “Yep, Blake played eight baseball games in Minneapolis over the weekend.  Went 12 for 20, two home runs and a couple doubles.”  “Craig is 82 and 4 this wrestling season.  He’s headed to state next week and shooting for a state title.”  “Shelly is on a travel team playing middle and is getting looked at by college coaches at these volleyball tournaments on the weekends.”  Parents are establishing their own self-worth, their own self-esteem on the successes of their children!  Even though many parents have an idea of the statistics – 1 in 6000 Iowa boys will make the NFL and 2.5 kids in 10,000 will play in the NBA – they still think that their child will beat the odds!

The reality is that high school participation in Iowa has dropped by 16,000 kids over the past five years.  Schools in our immediate area are having difficulty fielding teams, some dropping sports or looking for another school to share with them.  Just this summer we got a request from a local school wanting to know if we would share girls basketball because they thought they would only have 10 girls at most go out, and the majority of those were 9^th graders.  Last year, only two teams in the Upper Iowa Conference were able to fill a complete wresting lineup.  Our numbers at NFV are fairly solid right now, but will they continue?  Will teenagers still have the desire to play sports in high school after already having played for a number of years?  What can be done to provide solid learning opportunities for kids to learn how to play the games, and yet not make the decision to quit when they get to high school? 

One idea was shared with me a number of years ago by a long-time college baseball coach who had been talked out of retirement to coach a high school team.  Like many successful coaches at the high school level, he recognized the importance of being involved with the youth program to see that there was good coaching and that kids were learning the right way to play the game.  But he also realized that kids needed to just play and have fun like we all did back before video games and over-involved parents.  So he set up a sandlot program too.  The way it worked was actually quite simple.  First off he publicized it with all of the youth teams in town and their parents and every Tuesday morning in the summer he and three or four high school kids brought a few bats and balls to the one of the parks in town and kids showed up to play, just like we did when I was growing up.  Teams were picked and they played, sometimes using modified rules like “pitcher’s hand” or played modified games like “work up.”  There was never a day when kids didn’t show up, and while most also played in organized leagues at night it sure looked like they were have a lot more fun in the sandlot on those mornings.  

The idea above is just one.  I am sure that there are others, but the fundamental thing that I believe needs to happen is that we need to back off a bit on how many games some kids play or matches they wrestle.  Maybe instead of wrestling 80 matches, scaling it back to 40 and taking some time to go and watch older kids wrestle so your son can learn by watching older kids compete will keep a young man wrestling when he is in high school.  Perhaps instead of playing in ten softball tournaments in the summer, five will keep your daughter fresh and leave some weekends open to enjoy family or other pursuits.  In many respects with youth sports, less may in fact be more.