OT: Do you think your child can play D1 ball?
I don't know if anyone listens to Colin, I know a lot of people don't care for him, which could really apply to anyone on tv/radio today.
More interestingly, there is a statistic that says 49% of NBA players have an "elite" athlete in their family. Elite meaning they played professionally, internationally, or D1. The NFL and MLB is significantly lower, at less than 20%. So when it comes to nepotism, from an athletic standpoint, do you think it is better genes or better exposure/opportunities, or both? Does it depend on the sport?
Also of interest, the average NBA player is 11 inches taller (6'6) than the average American, which would obviously suggest it is more genetic.
I'm not a big person at all, 6'1, 160 lbs soaking wet, ran a 4'5 forty at age 33 (and lost by a half step to Da'Shawn Hand who was 6'4 280 at the time. ) Da'shawn's dad is 6'3 and maybe 185ish, but was an all-conference receiver in high school. I just assumed my kid would be a D1 level talent, because I would encourage him to start at a good age, I would put him in the right position form the start, I would hold him back a year if necessary as I was a late bloomer, and I have a good friend who is well-respected and connected coach. I'm also aware that part of this is wishful thinking and Al Bundy type reminiscing, but I can't be the only person who thought or thinks this...right?
Thoughts?
(Also, Colin is still making nice with Harbaugh, so he is defending Harbaugh vs Saban, pointing out Saban complains about what he doesn't like eg. Chip Kelly's no huddle offense as being "bad for the kids" as well as pointing out his lack of Harbaugh-level success at MSU and in the NFL)
Your probably too busy installing a spoiler on your 97 Buick Lesabre. Better pay attention to him or he'll end up in a gorilla habitat.
I bet its yellow. I also bet your name is either Dyson, Conner, Evan, Chad, Brice, or some other soft-ass new age fancy boy name.
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Irish boys were named Conor, Gaelic for King. The rest are ignorant Americanizations. Know your shite, boy.
Why would he place his kid on a piece of high, open, uncultivated land. How would that make him better at football?
Do you know how many kids are held back in school? Depending on what month you're born in, determines when you can start school, and there is a gray area, usually sept/oct where you can go either way. So you can have an undersized, under-developed physically and mentally kid compared to his classmates, or you can hold him back so that he will be the same age as everyone.
And yes, I certinly would. I was 5'3 in 9th grade. I would expect my son to be similar. If I thought he had the desire and a legitimate opportunity to not have to pay for college? why would I not start him a year later in school? Offending your sensibilities would be well worth a $20k to $100k college education.
Scholarship might be JUST football for you, but it means a lot more to a lot of people, ie: the value of a free college education. More parents train their kids to get free school than to get a professional athlete.
their kids now, and it has nothing to do with athletic ability or opportunities. Kids with late birthdays are often better served by starting school a year later since they'll be slightly older than their classmates, rather than slightly younger.
There's a great chapter in Freakanomics on this (not the intentional redshirting, but how kids that are old(er) for their grade tend to do much better).
My 3 year old's birthday is in September. My wife and I are trying to decide whether to push him forward or hold him back. I was younger for my grade (November bday so graduation at 17) and sometimes I think it would have been nicer to be older rather than younger. I still played sports and did fine in school, but would have been nice to be a little bigger and drive earlier.
I think you're still gonna be driving at 16.
We held back our oldest son in Kindergarten because the teachers said he was too immature and holding him back would really pay off. After we put the pride aside, we asked at least 20 families that did the same with their kids and every single one raved about how great that turned out. You would rather he be a leader than a follower - this really points that process in the right direction.
This really doesn't have much to do with holding back strictly for sports, but if any of you are contemplating it for your kids for other reasons, it is a really good idea to do it.
Or, confirmation bias. I'm not sure it makes much difference. My wife's cousin works as a counselor in an elementary school in Texas, where she says almost every parent holds boys born in the summer back a year, to be better leaders, athletes, or whatever. She says she has seen no evidence to support that claim and has started her own boys when they were supposed to start. Some kids may be immature and not really ready, but I don't think just routinely holding back kids who are otherwise ready for school is such a great idea.
My daughter is the youngest in her second grade class and is short. She competing against kids who are almost two years older than her because everyone redshirts their kids now. Fortunately she's a fire cracker and totally holds her own (in the gifted program, the 2nd grade spelling bee representative, etc.) but she's a good 8-12" shorter than the other kids who should be at least in the 3rd grade.
If you are afraid that your kid can't compete against kids their own age, they are going to grow up soft and aren't going to play D-1 even if they have the genetics. It's about the journey and the competition. Teach your kids to compete and you will have actually given them an advantage in all of life.
(There are cases where redshirting is good for like 1/100 kids. Not for 75% of them.)
Thank you--I wrote something similar below, but I must have been writing it when you posted this. Because so many *other* people redshirt, it forces people with kids who are young for their grade to consider it even if they wouldn't normally. I have this idea that sooner or later we'll have a redshirting "arms race" and as a result no one will have an advantage but we'll have a bunch of eight-year-olds who are in kindergarten.
and the main worry about not pushing him forward (by rules we have to sign off to move him ahead) is that he will be bored in school. I'm sure he will be fine either way, but some things are definitely going to be different if you are older vs younger. Most of the time it is transparent, but sometimes you are very aware of it. I struggled when I couldn't drive to my Junior prom, and even in college, it is weird when you can't go to the bars until you are almost in your second semester of your senior year.
I also am thinking that school has changed since I was in school. I hate all the standardized tests and hearing that kids in kindergarten are getting homework. As someone who has been dutifully working for the last 13 years with very few breaks (4-5 weeks a year) I'm also don't care to push my kids to "adulthood" to early either. I want him to be an adult and self sufficient, but an extra year of living as a kid doesn't sound so bad.
Sports are a side affect of this as well. I want them to play a competitive high school sport. I don't really care which one, but would hope one is atleast a team sport, as it promotes a healthy lifestyle and teaches about winning and losing even when you try or sometimes don't try that hard. Competing against kids who are a year or a year and a half older might mean he doesn't get to experience that.
We have a kid with a late September birthday. Didn't "redshirt," so as a result he is youngest in his grade (he would have been a grade younger if he had been born 2 days later).
I recognize that some kids do need a little extra time to develop physically, socially, emotionally. But I actually bear some resentment (perhaps unfairly) toward the people who hold their kids back without much reason. I hadn't even heard about redshirting until my kid was in pre-school, but then we realized that if "everyone else" is doing it, then it makes it even MORE difficult to send your kid to school at the proper time.
In other words, if no one redshirts, then the gap in age in a grade is 365 days. But if lots of people redshirt, then a kid who has a late birthday and goes to school on time might be *by far* the youngest in the class--and in a grade with kids who are 13, 14, 15 monthis older. And of course there are kids in a lower grade who are actually older than the kids a grade above them.
Fortunately it worked for us, and I would say sending our kid was fine because intellectually, emotionally, and physically he was ready (he's still one of the taller kids in his grade, so I can't IMAGINE him being a grade younger). So it seems to depend on the kid, but I would really encourage people not to do it without a good reason.
my son is Nov 21 - had he been born 12 days later, he'd be in 1st grade now instead of 2nd grade (12/1 cutoff). Technically, we had the choice of waiting but the pre-school was full day (and he was in pre-K/day care for 2-3 years so full day school wasn't a big transition) and the teachers said he was ready academically. We figured, why pay 900/mo for another year of pre-K/daycare if he's ready? sure, he'll be young and has had some struggles with focus at times, but he's appropriately challenged. We were afraid that he'd get bored as a kid who turns 6 just 10-11 weeks into Kindergarten. It's not as easy to skip ahead a grade than it is to hold a kid back and repeat kindy/1st grade.
Naw, I want 'em out of the house as fast as possible.
You need to read it. Being born early in the year is a huge advantage in sports and in life. I'm planning on holding my kids back a year.
I wouldn't necessarily base my decision on when to send my kid to school on a book by Malcolm Gladwell. There might be other sources who are not as popular and well-known, but might also have expertise on things like, you know, childhood development, child psychology, childhood education, etc.
You could also add expertise in areas like statistics, the scientific method, sociology to the list that Gladwell is either lacking in or ignoring completely. He makes some interesting points, as do many of the pop psychology or sociology books published in the past 50 years. He advances an argument but doesn't really have the evidence to support the claims he makes.
is few kids seldom reach that level and to get a free eduction. Also to get there kids will have to start young and play a ton of, which ever sport you pick. That means years of equipment, team fees, specialty coaches, travel and all that goes with that. You break it all out and you probably don't save much money with that free education, but that is what it takes to obtain it.
I think there is a little bit more to it than that. Growing up in a competitive environment should prepare kids to enter the workforce. Having a good work ethic and busting your tail can go a long way towards securing a financially sound future.
I turned 17 just before graduating. It was hell trying to keep up and compete with older kids.
The problem with this logic is that elite athletes are better athletes than the kids two years older than they are.
The Outliers discussion, which I found interesting, also assumes that everyone has the same set of educational and athletic opportunities. What is so effing stupid is the average parent thinking that by holding their kid back a year it is going to make them the "January" or "February" in the hockey play by play from the book. In the book the teams in the hockey game are composed of the truly elite players at a given age, each of which has been given the opportunity to train with the best coaches and from an early age. So once all of the coaching is relatively even, birth month can show through. But these players are a very small slice of the elite players.
Becoming an elite athlete requires a combination of genetics and work.
Now, there are a lot of people who work hard to become an athlete. Millions of them. Starting from before high school, many children dream of and work toward an idea of becoming an elite professional athlete.
Being genetically gifted is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to achieve "elite" status. Working hard and smart is almost always a necessary, but not sufficient condition to achieve "elite" status as well.
There are many examples of players with elite gifts that, through lack of personal discipline or poor choices or simply lack of desire to pay the sport they are gifted in, do not become elite athletes.
And most of us probably know or know of someone who put in the hours in the gym or on the ice, whose parents spent countless hours taking him or her to camps and travel games and so on. And they played and played well. But not well enough to be "elite." Because the gifts just weren't there.
A guy who sustains a long career in the NBA works hard. This is basically a universal truism. Even a guy like Allen Iverson, who hated practice, worked out and developed his game over thousands of hours of his personal time.
But the guys who are in the NBA aren't just there because they are hard workers. It is not true that any average 6-foot guy can make the NBA if he just works hard enough. Or that any guy can become FIFA's world player of the year if they just start playing soccer young enough.
As others have noted in this thread, the percentage of people to achieve "elite" status is extremely small. They are the best of the best. They are the ones who worked hard playing their sport AND their body happened to have the right structure AND they happened to grow to a good height AND they don't get hurt frequently.
Elite athletes are the pinnacle confluences of the best athletic genetics with the hard work of someone with a drive to succeed.
tl, dr
ts;dc
You cared enough to reply.
and a lot of what I would say is it does take a ton of natural ability (genes) and a ton of hard work. Some people are just gifted athletically, some more muscially or art, it something I truly believe is a gene some have.
There is an intangible though I have seen from playing sports to the highest level, coaching and even having a daughter who is playing in college. To be a D1 athlete there is just an "it" factor that you have to have. It's hard to explain, but it's the person who will do anything to win a game. They have no concern for their health/safety and will run through a wall to win a game. I have seen many kids play a sport and be very good at it, but there is always a point where they just let up a little bit because something is going to hurt if they do it and just won't make that sacrifice. The ones who are talented and will make it are the ones who really catch coaches eyes and usually suceed at making it to the highest level.
That "it" factor you speak of is a personal character disposition, which is basically folded into "work ethic" though they do affect slightly different areas of behavior. It is still, however, basically an issue of behavior.
even if your parents didn't play ball, chances increase for your sucess if they did, indeed, have athletic genes. McCaffery and even his backup are two good cases in point. Hell three McCaffreys are even a better testatment. Two Mannings. Ty Wheatley, Wangler, legacies all over the boards, especially in football because it has the largest roster are key.
BB, as suggested, would be likely to give the kids a chance if they inherited like size.
But regardless of how much ability you inherited, many posters hit on the two big ones, dedication and that "it" factor as one poster/referee indicated. I coached some good ones, but the few greats, as he points out, would simply do things the others would not. They were fearless and loved to demonstrate how to do something correctly. I have a feeling Peppers was a lot like this since he started playing ball.
Better start teaching him how to play baseball.
I'm pretty sure baseball is, statistically, the hardest sport to go pro in.
There definitely is a huge gene aspect to this. Interestingly, my mother competed colliegiately, but that was back in the early 50's, and the world was different. (Prior to D-1). To the best of my knowledge, she didn't pass on excessive athletic genes.
We adopted twins, who are more athletic than we are. I still am very skeptical of D-1 talent in either of them. However, our daughter made the Varsity Soccer team as a Freshman, which seems pretty good. Our son loves football, and is still growing. But the reality is that if he is to do anything, it is in baseball . . . being a natural lefty with a strong arm, he has "potential" to pitch.
I really think that the genes obviously favor particular sports or positions.
- Size (you either are big enough to play OL/DL or you're not)
- Flexibility (cornerback, many positions in many sports)
- Height (basketball)
- Hand-Eye Coordination (Baseball)
- Strength (all)
- Speed (you either have speed or you don't?)
- Arm strength, dominant arm (a natural lefty with a good arm is something you either have or you don't).
The reality for me is that I don't pine for my kids to play D-1 sports. There are lots more important things in life.
Not to be too cynical, but on top of what you said, many who get to that next level include a little bit of Growth hormones or steroids. Not everyone has them, but I'm guessing it'd be more than any of us would be comfortable admitting.
I doubt any will ever play at the D1,2, or 3 level.
If we're lucky, my older daughter might make the HS softball team in a few years.
She plays soccer, swimming, softball.
Little Girl is a skater, swimer, gymnastics & soccer player . . . but she sucks at all of the above.
Maybe dancing?
Little Boy is the best athlete in the family. Soccer, Gymnastics, LaCrosse, and Swimming.
Might play a couple HS sports someday, but that's about as far as his genes will probably take him.
Anybody can play D3 football if they want. Some schools don't even have cuts. We had guys on my team at Hope that didn't even play ball in high school!
fuck paying for all these sports for my no-talent spawn.
on a related note:
I know a few "Sports Dads" that are so obsessed with their kids getting athletic scholarships that they are paying tens of thousands for multiple travel leagues, personal trainers, top of the line equipment, specialized camps, coaches, etc.
If they put just half of it into an MESP account each year instead they'd have thier kids college education funded in no time.
They say it's about saving the money, but it's pretty obvious it's really about parental bragging rights.
To that I say, Go Knights! We had no cuts for football, either...of course, no one made the team.
That's a scam (not joking); the small D3 schools let your kid play on their football team because they want the tuition. He never sniffs the field for a year or two and quits the team and stays to graduate.
and enjoy them so they continue to play pick up games, and IM sports when they are in college. Expecting that they could make a D1 scholarship is pretty naive on my part.