Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Joe Mauer stayed home. Not only did he re-sign with the Minnesota Twins, he LITERALLY stayed home. Born and raised in St. Pau,l Minnesota Mauer can’t even get himself to go across the bridge into Minneapolis. Arguably the best catcher in major league baseball, with “told” riches laid out before him for the taking, he turned it all down in order to walk the same streets, shop the same shops, and see the same sights he has seen his entire life. Yup, old Joe doesn’t even have to find himself a new barber–the same guy  who cut his hair in high school still has the job!

Now, I live in Cleveland, and you might have heard about our own native son, kid named Lebron, who has a very similar opportunity before him. (I wrote a little about this in “It’s Not About the Money. No, Really!”). Lebron James appears to be the biggest, most important free agent in the history of the NBA. 25 years old and no worse than entering his peak years, Lebron is an unrestricted free agent.  Indeed, unlike Mauer, Lebron is actually unencumbered by any of the economic realities of his game or his league–his off the court income dwarfs what he has or might make in salary. As such he has the liberty to make his decision based on the non-contractual issues like the aforementioned off court income, or the adventure of exploring a new city, or mining the value of staying home.

It’s really hard to determine which of these two young men is more important to the economic success of this team, and the related economic success of his city. Knowing that Mauer would re-sign allowed Minneapolis to give the go-ahead to a new baseball stadium. Knowing they had Mauer in the fold, ownership has begun to sign other pieces to a championship puzzle. On the other hand the most conservative estimate of Lebron’s economic impact is that he has single-handedly increased the value of the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise by $100 million. This is probably ridiculously low; Dan Gilbert the mortgage king will have surely made the largest “underwater” major purchase in the history of sports should Lebron James leave now.

Lebron just completed his seventh year as a Cleveland Cavalier and despite yeoman efforts by general manager Danny Ferry and owner Dan Gilbert, Lebron and company have not been able to bring a championship to Cleveland. This has been his mantra, oft stated, that winning is his only priority. Only slightly behind that, though, is the goal of winning “at-home.” Lebron actually has more in common with Joe Mauer then it seems at first blush, for Lebron is not really a Cleveland kid at all, but kid from Akron. Indeed, Lebron built his castle in Richfield, equidistant as the crow flies from both Akron and Cleveland, but spiritually more a suburb of the former.

So what is Lebron to do? What does Lebron want to do? What SHOULD Lebron do? Our local paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has been awash in stories, commentary, conjecture, and innuendo. A friendly acquaintance who writes for the Plain Dealer has been tasked with the onerous job of recording and reporting “Lebron rumors”, with absolutely no requirement to confirm anything she writes. It’s the Lebron-A-thon, all Lebron all the time! The hometown is actually getting smaller and smaller every single day.

What do I think? I think Lebron is a really smart kid, much, much smarter than the majority of sports fans give him credit for. He’s actually quite different from the majority of the kids who went straight to the NBA from high school, and pretty much all of the “one and done” kids who spent a year in college before beginning their careers. My bet is that Lebron would have been much more than the keeper of a “gentleman’s C” average in college. No, Lebron would have been a solid B student taking a real college curriculum.

He’s also aware that he will eventually screw up somewhere, somehow, sometime. He’s a pretty shrewd character to be sure, but he is also a 25-year-old who has openly admitted that he is still in the process of growing up. Cleveland is a pretty small place, more small-town than major city actually, and it’s pretty hard to hide 6′8″, 265 pounds of handsome wealthy young man. I’d love to be wrong on this, really I would, but my guess is that he senses the inherent safety of a truly big city.

Knowing this I still think Lebron is too smart to not see that he has placed himself in a no-win situation should he decide to leave Cleveland now. There’s been too much talk over the last several years about winning at home, and too little talk too late about what home actually is. I think Lebron realizes this, and I think he is using his unique position to maximize his chances of winning one for the “hometown.” I’m predicting some fancy footwork, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and a couple of major surprise announcements at the end of this week, all of which give Lebron a chance to make good.

Then what’s the true value of staying home? Here’s my bid. The value of staying home is exactly one championship. My prediction is that Lebron signs a two-year contract with a player option for a third. If he wins a championship in either year one or year two he’s outta here. He made good, kept his promise, it’s time to move on. If he fails to win a championship in year one or year two he invokes his player’s option to great fanfare, with all kinds of emphasis on the sacrifices that he is making to stay in Cleveland. If the Cavs shouuld win championships in BOTH years one and two he certainly stays for year three, unable to resist being linked with Phil Jackson as the only architects of “three-peats” in the history of the NBA.

After that, come hell or high water, it’s Cleveland in the rearview mirror. Three years, over and out. At age 28 Lebron will be off to other pastures, new challenges, fresh horizons. World as oyster, and all that sorta thing.

Why? At the end of the day it pretty much comes down to the difference between Joe Mauer and Lebron James much more than it comes down their similarities or to the differences in their hometowns. Mauer has never sought the limelight. Indeed, he has actively sought the cocoon of small-town, hometown. James, on the other hand, has ALWAYS sought more. Even in high school he had one eye on the game at hand and one eye on the tomorrow to come. Nothing wrong with that, really. They are what they are, and it is what it is.

S0 what’s the value of staying home? One championship and three years to get it. You heard it here first.

 This whole Tiger bashing thing has never seemed quite on the mark for me, but until recently I really haven’t been able to put my finger on just why. Leave it to two of my touchstones, Crossfit and Sports Illustrated, to bring it into focus.

Selena Roberts opined this week that in some way Tiger is not worthy to take the crown from the great Jack Nicklaus, that his personal failures, his lack of “goodness” somehow disqualifies his results on his particular field of play. She goes even further, conflating l’affaire Tigre with the whole Barry Bonds/Mark McGuire debacle in MLB. Somehow Ms. Roberts is channeling Tiger’s aggrieved mistresses on our collective behalf, coming to the inevitable conclusion of the offensitive that Tiger’s behavior off the course nullifies his accomplishments on it.

Rubbish.

Unlike Mssrs. Bonds and McGuire there is no credible evidence that Tiger has altered the balance of the playing field through anything other than talent and effort. Not unlike our growing Crossfit competitions, it is nothing but the result that matters on the competitive pitch. Tiger has 14 majors, 70-something wins. Count ‘em.

Ms. Roberts commits the amateur’s error of amnesia, a particularly disappointing error given her experience and position as a national sportswriter. You see, most of the extraordinary athletic feats we extoll were performed by jerks, at least at the time of their performance. Raving egomaniacs, barely tolerated by their competitors, if tolerated at all. Think about it. Think about the signature athletic accomplishments in your lifetime and the lifetime just prior. Does anyone qualify as a genuinely nice guy? Happily married, kind to children and small animals alike? I’m sure there are others, but I come up with a very short list of Lou Gherig  and…Lou Gherig.

Jack Nicklaus? Ridiculed behind his back as “Fat Jack” by the jealous, and “Carnac” for his self-righteous know-it-allness. Possessed of an outsized ego and not really at all concerned with how he was perceived by anyone in his heyday, it was only at the end of his PGA career that the “Golden Bear” became teddy. Jack possessed that certain arrogance and dismissiveness of any and all not strictly necessary to achieve his lofty goals, similar in scope and kind to the various corporate chieftains of his generation (Se Welch, Jack, et al).

Babe Ruth? Come on. A veritable bull in the china shop of life, he mauled his way through the 30’s indulging appetites as outsized as Tiger’s. Openly jealous of the afore mentioned Lou Gherig, our collective memory of The Babe is air-brushed in the azure of ages past, just like Ms. Robers. Mickey Mantle? Spend a little time reading about his treatment of Roger Maris, or re-read Bouton’s “Ball Four”. The guy was a ton of fun, but virtuous is nowhere to be found in any true-to-life memoirs of The Mick.

Philanders, drunks and gluttons, or arrogant chieftains lording their superiority over their minions, the owners of most of our cherished athletic records are nearly uniformly men besotted with themselves, consumed in and by their pursuits, convinced only that they deserve whatever it is that they desire. At the very least they are possessed of overriding ego and an ability to channel their every effort in the pursuit of records, leaving in their wake a sea of collateral human damage.

Well, that…that…that just seems so WRONG. They don’t deserve our support, our worship. They should PAY for their misdeeds. Ah…here Ms. Roberts gets it just a little more right. They do, indeed, pay for being miscreants off the field, at least nowadays they do. Kobe loses millions in endorsements for taking liberties with one who was unwilling. Barry Bonds makes nary a cent off the field, and hasn’t since long before his hat size grew.  Mark McGuire is driven underground for YEARS after his retirement, cut off from both the succor of adoration that might come to the clean holder of a cherished record, and just as completely shut out of the riches that such adulation would bring. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe Louis and others in that era largely escaped this fate because of a fawning media who protected them. Ms. Roberts is quite right to decline that role, and quite right to unravel the tightly woven tale of Tiger that allowed him to accrue his nearly obscene off-the-course riches.

But “goodness” as a pre-req for greatness as regards epic athletic feats and achievement? Nonsense. It’s still exactly 100M, and it will remain so whether or not Usain Bolt becomes a bonehead. A home run is still over the wall, whether it’s hit by The Mick or Junior. We shouldn’t care where Joe Willie spent the night before as long as he beats the Colts the day after. We are indifferent that Lance Armstrong leaves everyone he touches with his bike in a flaming heap by the roadside, we simply yearn for Tour de Lance v 8.0.

Tiger will pay a price, has paid a price, for his behavior. He is down…what?…somewhere between $25 and $100 Million A YEAR in lost endorsemant money right now. You know, $25 Million here, $25 Million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money, eh?

Me? I hope Tiger laps the field at both the British Open and the PGA. He plays golf by the same rules as Jack, Arnie, and Old Tom Morris; no gimmes, they still putt ‘em all out. Like Crossfit, every second counts, eh? Records are made to be broken and I want to experience the thrill of witnessing athletic feats of grandeur. I’ll decide whether or not to like Tiger based on his People Magazine profile, sure, and I’ll think about whether or not I buy something on his say-so a little more closely now, but I wanna see greatness on the golf course.

That’ll be good enough.

Bob Ryan, the great Boston Globe sportswriter, is famous for a writing style in which he simply jots down short little “thoughlets”. He basically just throws out whatever’s on his mind, expanding on some thoughts, and just letting others dangle, tiny little flags sent up the flagpole. If you’ve ever read him, and if you pay attention, you notice that he occasionally revisits these “thoughtlets” with a much deeper examination.  This technique or style has been ripped off by countless other sportswriters, usually without attribution.

Over the course of my day-to-day life I find myself interested in countless little ideas, tiny thoughts, or random observations. Not all of them are worthy of the full attention of the “Restless Mind”, but I think a lot of them really  ARE interesting, and I really hate to lose  them. So I thought on occasion I, too, would steal this technique from Mr. Ryan, only I am going to openly acknowledge that it’s his, and openly thank him for giving me the idea. So, without further ado, here are some  random thoughts banging around between my ears…

1.)  Lacrosse.  I am absolutely up to my eyeballs in lacrosse this weekend, and loving every minute of it. My son Randy had a  game yesterday, and looking back I realized that I spent at least six hours in front of ESPNU watching NCAA lacrosse as well. It’s really a fantastic sport. I’m a little guy, and lacrosse would’ve been a great sport for me when I was younger. Unfortunately, I didn’t come upon lacroses until I was a high school junior, and I didn’t get a chance to actually play lacrosse until I was in college. I was a pretty typical football player turned lacrosse player — great wheels, no stick. I was a defensive midfielder before the position actually  existed. “Hey, Darrell, see that kid over there? Yeah, that one. The one who knows how to play lacrosse. Go beat the crap out of him and don’t let him score!” Yup, I was THAT guy.

When my oldest son, Danny, started playing in junior high school I rekindled my love for the game. I’ve been telling people for years that lacrosse is the perfect game for boys. You get to do everything your mother ever told you NOT to do: you get to run with a stick, and you get to HIT people with! Seriously, how good is THAT?! It’s funny, though, because it’s exactly this part of the sport that is putting this wonderful, lovely game at risk in our local public high school.

You see, our athletic director is concerned that lacrosse is inherently a dangerous sport. He’s concerned that the injury rate is, or will be, much higher than all other sports simply because it’s lacrosse. I don’t think that’s the case. As a matter of fact, after watching very high level lacrosse on television this weekend, I’m convinced it’s not the case. I say this after having watched my youngest son, Randy, get the snot beaten out of him in his last three games (Randy is an attackman who plays the “X.” position; he has the ball an awful lot making him an inviting target).

What the athletic director is actually seeing it is a rather unskilled version of the game. As such it’s really not any different from unskilled versions of any other contact sport. Who among us hasn’t seen an unskilled basketball team rough up the team made of five extremely skilled but rather slight hoopsters? Or the soccer team that consists of brutes, muscling their opponents off the ball? Or the classic example, the hockey team whose tactics consist largely of muggings on skates? No, it’s not the game. Lacrosse is no more or nor no less injury-prone than any other contact sport.

It’s really quite beautiful, and I have to make sure our athletic director realizes this.

2.)  Women’s lacrosse. If you love men’s lacrosse you’ve probably watched a game or two of women’s lacrosse. While I write this I’m watching the Virginia women beat Towson State in a playoff game. They have lacrosse sticks, they shoot at 6′ x 6′ goals, and the ball spends an awful lot of time in the air being passed from player to player. The similarities seem to end there, though. It’s a totally different game!

I’m I’m reminded of watching my sister play field hockey in high school. Man, talk about a game with lots and lots of rules, totally impenetrable to all but the chosen few who have been initiated in some secret athletic rite. I could never figure out why any whistle was blown in field hockey, and I have to confess that I’m just as bewildered watching women’s lacrosse. The women are very fast, clearly elite athletes, and they’re certainly holding lacrosse sticks and shooting at lacrosse goals.

I hope I figure out women’s lacrosse in less time than it took me to figure out field hockey!

3.) There was a  very insightful article, an interview of the great economist Gary Becker in the Wall Street Journal couple of weeks ago. Becker touched on all kinds of topics, and spent a little bit of time on one that’s very close to my world, namely healthcare economics. He’s a little frustrated, heck were ALL a little frustrated by the willful obfuscation foisted upon the great unwashed mass of humanity that doesn’t work inside the Washington DC beltway when it comes to health care economics.

A case in point is the effect of out-of-pocket expenses on the overall amount of money that is spent on healthcare in any given country. In the United States we presently spend about 17% of our GDP on healthcare. Out-of-pocket expenses make up only about 12% of total health-care spending. In Switzerland, however, a country widely acclaimed for a very effective health care system, and equally acclaimed for spending only 11% of GDP on healthcare, the Swiss have out-of-pocket expenses equal to about 31% of total spending.

Swiss consumers of medical care are assumed to  have the ability to make complex medical decisions on their own behalf. Do you think maybe, just MAYBE there is a correlation here? Do you think that perhaps the fact that Swiss patients individually own 31% of the skin in the game has anything to do with driving overall healthcare costs lower? That perhaps the fact that every healthcare transaction is roughly 1/3 the responsibility of a patient, thereby involving every single patient in the financial aspects of every single health care decision, might be in part responsible for a lower percentage of the GDP being spent on healthcare?

Nah. Couldn’t be that.

4.)  Aches and pains. My partner Greg Kaye turned 41 years old this week. Greg actually handled the “turning 41″ part much better than I did 50, only finding it difficult over the last month or so. Greg is also a former athlete, just a little less  “former” then yours truly. But Greg has struggled over the last month or so because of a couple of nagging injuries which have limited his athletic exploits, and consequently reminded him that he is no longer 21.

I’ve got pretty much the same chronic infirmities that I’ve had for several years. I’ve made my peace with them, at least I think I have. The difference for me now is that every time something new crops up I’m having a hard time putting aside the thought that it’s not just a little niggling effect of being 50 years old, but that it might actually be something serious. I’m starting to see friends, and friends of friends die. Some of them are dying from common things, and some of them are dying from relatively uncommon, weird things. I have a little bruise on my trachea right now. In all likelihood that’s all it is. The good news: I probably won’t put a tie on for a week or so. The bad news: until I put a tie back on I’m going to be wondering.

We used to call this “medical students disease”, the phenomenon where every medical student came down with whatever disease we happen to be studying at the time. I apparently was never cured of “medical students disease”!

Admit it. How many times have you heard or read a professional athlete utter the words “it’s not about the money” and forced yourself not to gag? Seriously, it’s ALWAYS about the money.

We hear this ad nauseum during the free agent season in every professional team sport as players from superstars on down to less-than-super subs angle for the biggest payday possible. The phrases “max contract”, “salary cap”, and “veteran exception” vie for our attention with batting averages, rebounds, and sacks. We the fans are spectators not only to the games but also to the gamesmanship between owners and players, each trying to maximize their piece of the pie. It’s ALL about the money.

The realist in me wants to acknowledge that this is simply the labor/management battle played out on the front page of the Sports Section. How, I ask, is this any different from the headlines in the Business Section where the “Masters of the Universe” keep score with their multi-billion dollar spoils?

But then it hits me…in the board rooms and the banks how much money you make is the ONLY scorecard. There is no other way to rank the players or the teams. The person with the highest salary wins. That’s it. Nothing else. The company/bank with the highest profit is the “best”. If Goldman Sacs makes more money than JP Morgan then Goldman is the better bank and Lloyd Balnkfield is better and smarter than Jamie Dimon. Money is the only metric, and no one sits at home playing Fantasy Wall Street or cheering for their home town Hedge Fund.

And there’s the rub–the games we watch all have a scorecard, and we keep the score of the games the same way whether it’s the Cleveland Browns vs. the Miami Dolphins in the NFL, or the Shaker Heights Eagles vs. the Southbridge Mass Ponies in Pop Warner. A free throw is one point whether it’s Bingo Smith at the line in the NBA or bingo (yours truly) at Tri-City Park in Rocky River. If you’re playing the game in the back yard, or if you’re a fan of the pro game it doesn’t really matter. What you care about is winning. Period.

When was the last time you heard the words “it’s not about the money” from a big-time athlete, spoken or unspoken, and you believed them? I can come up with exactly one, and I’ve been following pro and college sports since I could turn on a TV. I really did believe Tim Tebow, the kid from Florida, who came back for his senior year to play quarterback. I mean, what did he have to gain money-wise by doing that? Heisman trophy winner. Leader of two NCAA champions. Top five pick in the draft whenever he came out. I really think the kid just loves college and being a college student and football player. Other than him? Shut-out.

But there’s something really interesting blowing in the winds of the NBA. You know that place, home to the “Bird Exception” that allowed the Celtics to pay Larry $33 Million in his last season. Where Michael Jordan took home a cool $30 Million despite making somewhere north of $50 Million in endorsements each year for 10 + years. Some upper mid-level power forward–I can’t even remember his name–agreed to hold off on signing his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers, promised a huge raise and the chance to play with LeBron James, only to exile himself to Utah when an offer of more money arose. I DO remember what he said in the paper, though. Yup…you guessed it…”it’s not about the money.”

Still, there it is, a whisper dancing just outside the conversation. Someone, a very important someone, has a chance to utter that fateful phrase, “it’s not about the money”, and really mean it. Here now is LeBron James, a free agent at the end of this NBA season, who has the opportunity to sign a contract that is all about his team winning. LeBron, who makes somewhere in the vicinity of $80 Million in endorsement money, can sign a “max contract” that will pay him around $100 Million or so over 7 years, maximizing his income from playing the game but also maximizing the difficulty that General Manager Danny Ferry will have gathering talent to surround LeBron in order to win. Win like you and I think about winning, as in winning NBA championships.

It’s just the tiniest of breezes now, barely enough to tickle what’s left of the leaves on the trees in Cleveland, not even enough to rustle the top sheet of the Plain Dealer as it sits in your driveway. LeBron could sign for the veteran’s minimum, about $2 Million per year. The $2 Million wouldn’t even count against the Cav’s salary cap! Doing this would free up, what, $20, $25 Million per year? That’s enough to sign not one but TWO major players, especially if they, too, sign on just a little bit to “it’s not about the money”, it’s about playing with LeBron and WINNING. Dwayne Wade AND Chris Bosh in Cleveland with LeBron James. In Cleveland, playing to win.

It’s still about the money, of course. I’m not naive enough to think that there wouldn’t be massive positive PR for LeBron if he took a minimum contract and stayed in his hometown city and then won. I also know that he can revisit his max contract option in 2 or 3 years and get pretty much the same number he would get now, even with the massive increase in off-court income likely to come his way if he played it my way. But still, a chance to say “it’s not about the money” and really mean it, even if it’s only for a couple of years? It’s man bites dog stuff.

Who knows if it will happen but I get a little smile as I think about the hurricane that will tear through the Player’s association if LeBron does this. I love thinking about David Stern’s office after the tornado plows through if LeBron comes out and says “it’s not about the money” and means it. If LeBron James is the first professional athlete in modern sports history who literally puts his money where his mouth is.

Hey…anybody out there have Maverick Carter’s cell number?

Why don’t we see any more three-sport athletes in college sports? I think it’s because we rarely see any STUDENT-athletes at the highest level of college sports.

Heck, we rarely see any more TWO-sport athletes. Gone are the likes of Bo Jackson and Dion Sanders in Division I. Gone, too, are athletes like me (football, lacrosse), my sister Tracey (field hockey, track) and countless other athletes at the Division II and III level. It seemed like all of the athletes I played with in College at Williams played more than one sport and played them all well. Most of them doing so much better than I to be sure. Most sightings of  multi-sport athletes in Division I have traditionally occurred in the Ivy League but no more. The three-sport athlete is dead and gone, and the two-sport athlete is following quickly.

Why is this so? Is this just the logical extension of the death of the three-sport high school athlete? Are ambitious, selfish, narrow-perspective coaches the cause of the demise of the collegiate multi-sport athlete? Or is it the parents, blinded by the false promise of scholarships who allow themselves to be swept up in the fallacy of early specialization, who are to blame?

The answer is “yes” at the lower levels of collegiate sports, Division III in particular. Parents especially shoulder the blame here, pushing their children to specialize early, to forgo  multiple sports played just for the fun of it in the hopes that a single sport will be the wildcard that gets their child into that super-selective college. Without any evidence that playing multiple sports will reduce the chances that a child will play a sport in college, parents allow themselves to be seduced by coaches who have only their own interest at heart.

What of Division I you might ask? What about a situation where a scholarship is possible? A situation where an athlete may get a free ride in return for playing a sport in college? Well, here we introduce the holy grail, an athletic scholarship in return for helping a Division I college make money. Here, at the highest level of sport is where money ultimately has soiled the playing field. For every sin that a high school coach has committed in the pursuit of a victory there is a college coach and a college athletic director and a college president who has committed the same sin. The college coach, AD, and president have the added PROFIT incentive to monopolize the college athlete,  and their sins are correspondingly magnified.

Need an example? How about looking at Florida State, home of the Seminoles and alma mater of the outstanding college football and baseball player Dion Sanders. Here, right now, we have a college president openly lobbying for a ruling that will not result in the forfeit of 14 football games as a result of an academic indiscretion on the part of a significant number of football players. We have a college president and an AD more concerned with the legacy of a millionaire coach and the affect on the reputation (and fund raising) of a football program than with the reputation of the academic institution.

The three-sport college athlete died shortly after the STUDENT-athlete died.

Need another example? Two weeks ago the WSJ published an article on sports in the Ivy League, “Can the Ivy League Get Its Game Back?” The basic theme was that there was something wrong with Ivy League sports and that the solution was that they should become more like major Division I programs and that they should compete in ALL post-season competitions. Tommy Amaker and Harvard are  held up as examples of what should be done, that lowering academic standards is priority one. Next is the institution of league tournaments to generate interest and money. Finally, it is proposed that Ivy League schools should offer non-need based athletic scholarships.

Rather depressing at first blush, but this may actually be where salvation may lie. This may be where the student-athlete is reborn and along with him or her the three-sport athlete. What if the Ivy League DID compete at the highest level and won WITHOUT changing their academic standards like they did pre-1960? What if the best high school student-athletes chose to attend Harvard or Princeton instead of Ohio State and Michigan? If the majority of college athletes do NOT go on to make a living playing their sport wouldn’t it make sense for them to attend the most selective college possible, just like every other kid?  What if the Ivy League applied the same criteria to admitting athletes as they do for the rest of the student body and looked for the well-rounded athlete? The three-sport athlete? What if Dartmouth and Columbia started to win?

I think the schools of the Ivy League should stand up and lead. By offering athletic scholarships to EVERY athlete who makes a varsity team they will remove the economic disadvantage they presently have when competing for the top STUDENT-athletes. Unlike other institutions of higher learning the Ivy League schools are more than able to handle the dollar costs involved. In doing so they will undoubtedly find that they can fill each of their teams many times over with student-athletes who would start at most Division I colleges without changing the admission criteria for athletes one iota.

In fact, the truer they are to the entirety of their stated admission criteria, to produce a college class of diverse, well-rounded individuals, the more likely they are to seek the well-rounded athlete. If the Ivy League were to return to its athletic roots while maintaining its academic ideals and identity the best and the brightest high school athletes will beat a path to the door of its member schools. The Ivy League will have “Its Game Back” and we will once again see Yale in a Bowl Game, Harvard in the Frozen Four, Princeton in the Final Four, and Penn in the College World Series. We will see them win. If they will lead they will win.

And perhaps, just maybe, a coach or a parent will say to a boy or girl who is doing homework after the last game of his or her Fall sport, “Hey, when is the first basketball practice?”

My younger son Lil’ Bingo, more universally known as Randy, is not going to play football this coming Fall. He suffered a concussion a couple of years ago as a freshman, and had another one this Spring playing lacrosse. His parents have decided that it’s too much of a health risk for him to take to play football this Fall. Unfortunately, but for a very good reason, Randy will therefore join the ranks of kids who are NOT  Three-Sport high school athletes. I thought of this as I was reading my email and came across the following:

Lacrosse Coach, in a wrap-up email to players and parents: “Make sure you take advantage of the July Lax camp list I sent last week.”

Universal response from players and their parents: “OK! As long as they don’t conflict with football.”

What? Wait! It’s July! The state rules say that football in Ohio can’t start until August 1st. Never mind lacrosse camp, what about summer jobs? Family vacations? Trips to visit potential colleges choices? Heck, what about marathon cloud Rorschach Test contests?

I hate to go all “old school” and everything, but remember back in the day when it seemed like everyone played everything? You know, Lance Armstrong (the original) All-American Boy kind of thing? The boys played some combination of football, basketball, baseball, hockey, or track and the girls played field hockey, basketball and softball. There was always someone who snuck in a season of some individual sport, some tennis or golf or swimming. Soccer and lacrosse were niche sports that were only played in tiny regional or economic pockets, but even the soccer players and the lacrosse players played a couple of other sports, too.

You remember those Three-Sport athletes, too, don’t you? It seems as if they weren’t just athletes. I remember being in class with kids who would graduate in the top 20 in high school who also seemed to be on every team in school. If you look around today they turned out to be some of the most successful adults you know.  Heck, I think my Williams friend Paul Bossidy was All-State in Connecticut  in football, basketball, AND baseball; my med school roommate Pat Spafford likewise in Upstate NY.

What happened? Where did they go? Where are the Three-Sport athletes of today and why aren’t they playing three sports?

The answer lies in the responses to the lacrosse coach’s email. In my (not so humble at all) opinion the problem lies not with the young athletes but with the coaches and parents of those athletes. I haven’t seen any evidence that the kids themselves are any different today than they were “back in the day”. Given their druthers I think today’s kids would choose to play a bunch of sports just like Paul and Pat and my sisters Tracey and Kerstin (both multiple sport All-Staters).  No, the problem lies with coaches who insist that “their” athletes devote all of their efforts to that one and only sport, and it lies with the parents who lack the gumption to stand up to the coaches and say “NO!”.

Let me offer an example of how this works at the highest level of high school athletics. There is a Catholic boys’ school here in Cleveland that is noted for both its academic excellence and rigor ,as well as for its sterling athletic record. This school, let’s call it St. Someone, is particularly famous for its longstanding football successes under a coach who has been there for 2+ decades; let’s call him Coach Win. Coach Win has been subtly and not so subtly telling his football players that they must play and train for football, and only football, all year round. Young men are discouraged from playing basketball because it interferes with “voluntary” off-season weight training (at which attendance is taken and recorded). They are discouraged from playing baseball or lacrosse because everyone knows that most of Coach Win’s  football starters run track (which he also happens to coach) in the Spring, even if most of them never go to any meets.

Not a lot of Three-Sport athletes at St. Someone ,as you might expect. This despite the fact that a huge percentage of the best jr. high athletes on one side of Cleveland forsake their public high schools specifically to play sports at St. Someone. Well, “so what?”, you might say. He keeps winning; he must be doing something right. Who cares if the boys don’t play other sports?  And how about all of those boys going on to play football in college on scholarships? Didn’t his way make that possible?

Here’s the rub…he should be winning MORE. With all of the athletes who are drawn to St. Someone he actually hasn’t won enough. His “way” of subtle and not so subtle pressure on the boys to play and train for only football has actually DECREASED the pool of football players and has contributed to several sub-par seasons in which a mediocre regular season was followed by an early post-season exit. Four years ago the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s columnist (the major local paper has columnists for high school football!) lamented the premature demise of the St. Someone football season after the starting QB and running back went down with injuries. In a school where 150 boys went out for freshman football a lack of depth was given as the cause! Where were the back-ups? Despite a stated desire to continue playing multiple sports many of them  felt forced to choose. When told that basketball practice or a baseball hitting drills were not adequate reasons for missing “voluntary” winter football workouts they chose to drop football. The following season injuries to a “thin” line resulted in another early playoff loss. Where were the backups? You guessed it. Playing their other sports despite a professed love and nostalgia for playing football.

It’s not just happening at St. Someone, either. The lacrosse coach quoted above coaches Randy at  Suburban High School which is most notable for its low student participation in sports, and it’s rather extraordinary mediocrity in all but the “tail that wags the dog” sport of soccer. Here, too, rather than reveling in the opportunity to have Three-Sport athletes on the football team ,the coaches behave in exactly the same manner as Coach Win at St. Someone. What about soccer at Suburban then, where Coach Kick has an equally long run of championship teams? Ah, that’s where the other half of the problem comes in– the athletes’ parents and all of those college athletic scholarships that supposedly are only going to go to the athletes who do it Coach Win’s or Coach Kick’s way.

How many times have you talked to someone and asked them why Little Johnny or Little Janey is no longer playing whatever and heard something like this: “Well, we just think the only way Johnny is going to play at the next level is to concentrate on just this one sport now.”? No matter how old Little Johnny might be. As soon as there are tryouts for a sport, as soon as there is a travel team or developmental team, as soon as there is a coach who will say that “the chances are better” if the athlete only plays that sport the parents start to see college dollar signs. Heavens, some of them start to talk about pro sports! A good little lacrosse player at Suburban High School did NOT come out for the lacrosse team this year after Coach Kick suggested a local spring Premier soccer program. Funny thing, though…he failed to make the team and lost out on playing lacrosse, too.

You see, that’s the dirty little secret that Coach Kick and Coach Win never let on to. Most of these kids are not going to play their sport in college, at any level, with or without a scholarship. The odds against them are just too great. The kids who ARE going to play in college would have played even if they were on one or two or even three other teams. In fact, they may have been BETTER in their primary sport if they had continued to play other sports, acquiring additional athletic skills and avoiding over-use injuries and such. Let’s not even bother to talk about the (un-) likelihood of a pro career; the numbers are so small and the roadblocks so numerous that it is the height of folly to even mention making a living at a sport when discussing high school athletes.

So, is it hopeless? Is the multi-sport high school athlete as extinct and little-lamented as the Dodo bird? Nah, of course not. It doesn’t have to be like this. The responsibility and the power rests in exactly the same place that harbors the problem: in the hands of the coaches and the parents. My brother Randall is raising a son who is a legitimate Div. I prospect in two sports, lacrosse and hockey. The longer he plays lacrosse the smaller the chance he has to play at “the next level” because of the prevailing coaching attitudes there, and yet he plays on. Why? Because he’s having a ball! Because his Dad (the best natural athlete I know, who is an ultra-competitive nut, by the way) thinks that’s just fine. Because both his lacrosse coach and his hockey coach find that multi-sport athletes tend to be great kids to coach. They seem to have learned a bunch of different ways to WIN! For whatever it’s worth my nephew is presently going over his Div. I lacrosse offers.

I think my nephew’s coaches are somewhat rare,though. Too rare to depend on as the solution to this problem. The self-interest of having kids playing only one sport is simply too irresistible for them.  No, in the end if we are going to save the Three-Sport high school athlete from extinction the effort is going to have to come from the parents.  The parents of our young athletes are going to have to wake up the the fact that their true self-interest does NOT lie in creating a  one-sport scholarship athlete because there is simply too much that is beyond the  ability of any parent to do so.

Parents need to wake up to the reality that it is their job to create this next generation’s Paul Bossidys and Pat Spaffords, the next Tracey Godins and Kerstin Winklers. Those 3-sport athletes tend to do pretty well on the playing fields of life.

They tend to be winners.