The SportsThink Review #114
October 4, 2024: The Adults Are The Problem
Welcome new readers! The SportsThink Review highlights my favorite sport-related content.. Most things I share are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read or encountered them recently. Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my lifelong obsession with the games we play. I also occasionally share articles and assorted musings on Twitter. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!
Howdy folks, happy Friday. Busy days at SportsThink HQ, so just one article to share for your weekend reading, but it’s a good one!
A Very Ugly Year In The Life of A D.C. Little League (Dave McKenna, Defector)
Timely for me, as I get ready to tackle youth sports in my undergraduate class next week. Every semester, I begin this topic by giving the students a chance to reflect on their best and worst memories of playing youth sports. What’s notable about the best memories is that only a small portion of them are about winning, the majority are overwhelmingly wholesome and familiar: the friendships, the post-game pizza, getting in trouble at the hotel during a travel tournament, the antics. For the bad memories, injuries are a predictably recurring theme. A few people note disappointing performances. Injuries and losses, these are part of the game; obstacles to overcome and learning experiences. But there’s a common theme in the majority of the bad memories: the adults. Parents, coaches, administrators, all finding a way to ruin a perfectly good thing. Adult malfeasance—at an absurd level— is at the heart of McKenna’s piece, which is really well done. It’s hard to recommend, because so much of the story is a bummer. But it’s also important to read and consider, because even if this is an extreme case, this is increasingly the nature of the sporting landscape we’re thrusting our kids into. We need to grow up and do better.
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See you soon,
Tolga