| Excerpt from:
Reforming Sports Before the Clock Runs Out
Preface
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Preface
PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS
1 The Way We Were
2 A Father’s Wisdom
3 Less is More
4 Passing Through the Age of Innocence
5 Throwbacks
PART TWO: SERVING OUR YOUTH
6 Forgotten Values of the Game
7 On to Disneyworld
8 Backyard Reform
9 The Profesionalization of Peter
10 The Athletic Scholarship Chase
PART THREE: BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL
11 Jock Culture 101
12 Scholastic Recruiting Wars
13 Suburban Council Rules
14 The Endless Season
15 Your High School Sports Hall of Fame
16 School Budget Blues
PART FOUR: SPORTS CASUALTIES
17 Fitness Failures
18 ACL Epidemic
18 Peaking at 15
20 Signing Day
21 Collegiate Gamblers Anonymous
22 A Courtship with Anabolic Steroids
23 The Up Side and Down Side of Title IX
PART FIVE: ROOT FOR YOUR TEAM
24 About Second, Third, and Fourth Chances
25 The Ephs Versus the Lord Jeffs
26 The Cheating Dome
27 Pulling the Plug on Baseball
28 Naming the Sports Complex
29 Moving Up to Division I Athletics
PART SIX: TRAVELING THE ROAD TO REFORM
30 Lessons from Singapore and Australia
31 Problem Areas
32 Needed Reforms
Epilogue
Essential Reading in Sports Reform
About the Author
Appendix I The National Institute for Sports Reform
Appendix II: Sports Reform Resources
Index
Preface
I have two confessions to make at the outset of this book. First, I have
a passionate love for sports. I loved athletics from the first day that
I remember my father throwing a football to me on the front lawn of our
home in New Hampshire. Sports were a new way to express myself. They enabled
me to understand who I was and they provided a way for me to assess my
limits. They also afforded me endless enjoyment in organized team situations
as well as recreational play. And, after my playing days were over, I
converted my love for sports to other areas, especially that of coaching
and just being a fan.
The second confession that I have to make is that I find it more difficult
with each passing year to maintain the same level of passionate love for
sports that I once experienced. Sports are in turbulent times right now.
What I see on our playing fields and what is revealed through countless
newspaper stories, television programs, magazine articles, and Internet
postings, is a sports landscape is crisis. My fear is that everything
that was once good about athletics will be ruined unless significant change
occurs in the near future. With these two feelings in mind - that of love
and concern - I have produced a book to convey my thoughts to readers
who may be experiencing similar emotions.
Reforming Sports Before the Clock Runs Out: One Man’s Journey
Through Our Runaway Sports Culture is part memoir and part critical
analysis. It chronicles my sports experiences in Upstate New York and
New England through a collection of short essays. As the son of a man
who loved sports, as an athlete of only modest accomplishment, as the
father of two athletes, as a college professor, as a coach, and as a sports
administrator, I have a story that I need to tell. It is the story of
an average American whose love affair with sports is being challenged
almost daily by an increasingly dark side to our athletic landscape.
The essays you are about to read recount observations and experiences
that are not unique to me. Because our sports culture sends mixed messages
to its athletes at all levels of sports in every community of our country,
it is also the universal story of countless other conflicted Americans
who have similar experiences in their communities. The only difference
between me and so many others is that I felt compelled to tell my story
before our sports culture becomes sadly unrecognizable and completely
irrelevant.
A more detailed examination of the issues raised here can be found in
the companion volume entitled Crisis on Our Playing Fields: What Everyone
Should Know About Our Out of Control Sports Culture and What We Can Do
to Change It. The reader is encouraged to examine this work for a
better understanding of the systemic organizational problems that presently
plague our sports landscape. The book provides thorough documentation
of the major problem areas in preprofessional sports and analyzes the
important legal and social events that may soon take place to reorder
the organization of athletics in our country.
The solutions to life’s most deep-rooted problems require patience,
persistence, and systematic study. They also require what my fellow sports
reformer, Jon Ericson, calls “truth-telling.” It is popular
now to engage in telling the truth about our institutions that have failed.
Whether it is Enron or the Catholic Church or the institutions that promote
and house our sports culture, telling the truth can have a cleansing effect.
Solutions to problems can only come about by first telling the truth about
what goes on in our sports culture. We can’t explain away, rationalize,
or deny the problems once the facts are exposed for all to see. And reform
can come only when there is accountability by those who organize, administer,
and supervise our athletes. Truth-telling about our sports culture can
be liberating, especially when seen through the eyes of someone who has
lived through the peaks and valleys of athletics for five decades.
This book tells the truth about how sports have become very serious business
and how immense pressure is now placed upon the early specialization and
professionalization of young athletes, about the intense promotion of
athletic achievement for the reward of an athletic scholarship or professional
contract, and about winning at all costs.
This book tells the truth about how academic corruption is pervasive
in our public schools and institutions of higher learning that house big-time
sports programs.
This book tells the truth about how commercialism and the big business
of preprofessional sports is increasing and threatening the integrity
of our academic institutions.
This book tells the truth about how the utilization of supplements and
performance enhancing drugs is pervasive and has been fueled by a culture
of winning at all costs.
This book tells the truth about how declining sportsmanship, elevated
violence, and the general misbehavior of athletes, coaches, parents, and
fans threaten to compromise the essence of athletic competition.
This book tells the truth about sports injuries and other health related
issues that are increasing for almost all levels of athletics and that
not enough is being done to prevent them.
This book tells the truth about how the media act irresponsibly and at
times unethically in the manner in which they hype, overexpose, and glamorize
the accomplishments of young athletes and popularize their misbehavior
both on and off the field.
This book tells the truth about sports gambling and the printing of point
spread information and how it threatens to undermine the integrity of
sports.
This book tells the truth about how sports opportunities are shifting
dramatically and producing severe inequities in many segments of our sports
culture.
This book tells the truth about how competitive sports, which satisfy
the needs of a small group of elite athletes, is the dominant theme in
our sports culture while recreational and fitness-based sports, which
satisfy the needs of the vast majority, have been deemphasized.
This book tells the truth about how existing sports governing bodies,
youth and amateur organizations, and educational institutions have done
a poor job of protecting the health and welfare of athletes who are increasingly
abused and exploited by our present sports culture.
This book tells the truth about how our sports-loving parents, many of
whom are well intentioned but are not sufficiently armed with important
information, may not be aware of the threat posed to their children if
our runaway sports culture is not reformed before it is too late.
The intent of this book is to tell the truth about the many difficult
issues swirling about our sports culture at the present time. This is
done by bringing these issues to life through my observations and experiences.
My goal is also to provide some solutions for the difficult problems faced
by those involved with sports at all levels. This is a daunting task but
one that must be started if we are to reverse the negative culture of
sports before it is too late. Lastly, and most important, my goal is to
spur discussion and prompt action at the local, regional, and national
levels about a crisis that presently undermines our most important possession
-- our kids.
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