IN THIS ISSUE:
FRONT ROW
- Youth and School Sports:
The New Tennis Brats: Parents
Six Dos and Don’ts for Moms and Dads
- Collegiate Sports: Basketball Prep Schools
in Danger of Fouling Out
- Professional Sports: Is Gambling the Next Steroids?
- Sportsmanship User's Guide: How to Prevent Officiating Conflicts of Interest
- Michael Josephson Commentary: "Playing for Someone Else"
SIDELINES
- Announcements: CC! Week and Youth Sports
Parents Survey
- Trivia Test: What Is the Best and Worst
Parental Tennis Behavior?
- Sportsmanship Forum
- You Make the Call: Can Strict Rules on
Fan Behavior Hurt Your Team?
- Principle of the Month: Treat Other Sports Participants With Respect
- Say What? Fishing’s lure, Roethlisberger’s crash, your horoscope and Phil’s and Costa Rica’s collapses
- Upcoming Seminars
There is no victory at
bargain basement prices.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president (1890-1969)
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FRONT ROW
Youth and School Sports
The New Tennis Brats: Parents
We've all heard about the superstar tennis brats of yore like
Connors, Nastase and McEnroe. But they have nothing on today's
brats – parents. Ever heard of the French dad who is serving eight
years in prison for spiking his children’s opponents’ water bottles
with Temesta, a drug that can cause drowsiness, resulting in the
death of a parent who was killed in an auto accident after drinking
it? As McEnroe would say: "You cannot be serious!"
Unfortunately, we are. And it may be a growing problem. In a recent web column for The Sports Network, tennis pro and psychologist Vic Braden said, "In the last few weeks, I have been consulted on how to handle screaming and abusive parents more than anytime in the past."
The problems are many: a highly competitive junior tennis system,
the constant striving for higher rankings, an increasingly litigious
society that makes referees reluctant to take action and parents who
are unaware of the consequences of their conduct.
Section 7.4 of the Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports provides
guidance for parents to develop healthy attitudes for their children.
Common parental problems are "overestimating their child’s skill,
resulting in unreasonable expectations of the program, the coach or
their child" or "verbal or physical abuse of administrators, coaches,
officials, athletes, spectators or parents."
"I’ve had parents shout at me for asking them to reconsider their
behavior," Braden wrote in his article. "They say, ‘Nobody knows my child the way I do.’ That could be correct in everyday behavior
patterns, but participation in competitive sports adds many
variables that aren’t necessarily exhibited in the home."
What is the difference between a healthy tennis parent and an
unhealthy one? Braden said it’s keeping the children’s needs in
focus. A red flag is when you talk to a coach about your child's
rankings more than about his or her development or pleasure.
In his monthly online column, "The Circle Game," tennis pro Greg Moran said he’s often asked what advice he would give to tennis parents and their kids regarding a child’s court development. "To the kids, I say enjoy the game and let it take you where you want to go. To the parents, I strongly urge you to let them enjoy the ride."
What kind of tennis parent are you? To find out, score yourself
by taking the USA Tennis "Parenting My Champion" test (the results may surprise you). To take the test, click here.
[Los Angeles Times, 6/1/06; www.sportsnetwork.com;
www.tennisserver.com; www.telegraph.co.uk]
The Gold Medal Standards for Youth Sports are a common framework of requirements that all youth programs should meet. Read about them here.
Concentration is the ability to think
about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary.
-- Ray Knight, baseball player
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Youth and School Sports
Six Dos and Don’ts for Moms and Dads
Six Dos
Coach Bruce Brownlee advises parents to memorize and say the
following to their child before and after every sports activity:
Before:
1. "I love you."
2. "Good luck."
3. "Have fun."
After:
4. "I love you."
5. "It was great to see you play."
6. "What would you like to eat?"
["The Six Things Parents Should Say to Their Player,"
www.brucebrownlee.com]
Six Don'ts
Parents sometimes don’t understand kids and sports. For that
reason, the Kentucky Youth Soccer Association suggests you avoid
the following:
1. Don’t tell your kid what to do on the way to games or practice.
(Kid’s response: "I know how to play!")
2. Don’t try to psyche up your child.
(Kid’s response: "They think they’re the one playing. ‘Are you ready? We’re going to win!’")
3. Don’t say anything if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
(Kid’s response: "Mom thinks she knows the rules, but she doesn’t.")
4. Don’t say anything even you do know what you’re talking about.
(Kid’s response: "You’re telling me the opposite of what the coach
told us.")
5. Don’t tell a kid after a loss that it doesn’t matter
(Kid’s response: "When you try to cheer me up, it just reminds me of the score.")
6. Don’t tell a kid after a loss that it does matter.
(Kid’s response: "Parents take losses harder than we do. Get over it!")
[Adapted from "Nine Things Parents Don’t Get About Kids and
Sports," www.kysoccer.org]
Those who know how to win
are much more numerous than those
who know how to make proper
use of their victories.
-- Polybius, Greek historian (c. 203 BC - 120 BC)
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Collegiate Sports
Basketball Prep Schools in Danger of Fouling Out
The entire student body of Lutheran Christian Academy, an
unaccredited private high school in Philadelphia, is made up of
basketball players. They have no building or classrooms, operate
out of a community center and have only one teacher -- their coach.
Boys to Men Academy in Chicago consists of 16 basketball players who earn credit through an online correspondence school.
At Stoneridge Preparatory School in Simi Valley, California, where a private investor funds the team and players are absent from school for weeks at a time, ten of its players and its coach transferred en masse to another prep school because it gave them "a better offer."
Principle Eight of the Arizona Sports Summit Accord holds that
"Sports leadership must ensure that the first priority of their
student-athletes is a serious commitment to getting an education
and developing the academic skills and character to succeed." What
has triggered such a semi-pro farm system?
In years past, athletes with poor academic records went to traditional New England prep schools, military academies or junior colleges. That all changed when Tracy McGrady jumped from Mount Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina to the pros in 1997, signing a deal with Adidas that funneled $300,000 to the small, 200-student school and nearly $1 million to its coach. Practically overnight, basketball academies became financial goldmines. Not helping matters were lax rules by the NCAA, which did not monitor high schools or question transcripts.
Today there are an estimated 5,000 prep schools across the country.
More than two dozen recently formed the National Elite Athletic
Association, established their own conference and are seeking a shoe contract and TV deal. In California, plans are underway to launch a league of prep schools across five western states.
But that may change. After allegations surfaced last year about a
prep diploma mill in Florida, the NCAA commissioned a task force to
investigate which schools are legit and which ones are exploiting
the system. Last month the association announced it had invalidated
15 schools, promising more to come.
The crackdown, however, may have come too late. Kevin Lennon, head of the task force, told The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Now that we’re peeling back the onion, we’re a little surprised at how many of them there are."
Former Temple coach John Chaney isn’t surprised, telling the
paper, "They’re the ones that okayed all these prep schools.
They’re looking at them now, but where were they before?"
[The New York Times, 2/25/06, 6/7/06; The Philadelphia Inquirer,
6/6/06; The Washington Post, 2/12/06, 2/16/06, 3/5/06, 3/12/06,
3/26/06]
Nearly 50 influential leaders in sports issued the Arizona Sports
Summit Accord in 1999 to encourage greater emphasis on the ethical
and character-building aspects of athletic competition. There are
youth/interscholastic and collegiate/Olympic versions. Read the full texts here
The only problem with success is it doesn’t teach you how to deal with failure.
-- Tommy Lasorda, baseball manager
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Professional Sports
Is Gambling the Next Steroids?
Legal gambling in the United States rakes in more than $135 billion
each year, almost triple the annual revenues of movie box offices,
recorded music, live entertainment and spectator sports combined.
It’s the latter category, however, that worries a lot of people.
That’s because some of that change is wagered by mega-rich pro
athletes whose gambling problems have become tabloid fodder: John Daly (golf), Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley (basketball), Art Schlichter (football), Oscar De La Hoya and Evander Holyfield
(boxing) and Darren McCarty and Jaromir Jagr (hockey).
What has everyone skittish is that these well-publicized individuals
may be just the top cards in the deck. You can bet executives from
every professional sports league are hoping some superstar’s
gambling losses won’t one day mysteriously "affect" his or her game and potentially devastate the sport. Don’t think that couldn’t
happen?
The ink is still fresh on such headlines as the NHL gambling ring involving coaches, players and Wayne Gretzky’s wife and the pre-World Cup Italian soccer match-fixing fiasco. To safeguard "the integrity of the sport," Principle Fourteen of the Arizona Accord discourages gambling. It's no surprise that no major sports franchise has ever been awarded to Las Vegas.
What Are the Odds?
Mixing pro athletes with high-stakes gambling makes people nervous -- and suspicious. Some, for example, wonder why Michael Jordan took time off to pursue a baseball career, speculating he may have cut a deal with the NBA to leave until he got his gambling house in order.
And more than a few heads turned when John Daly (who has admitted losing $50-60 million in gambling) lost the American Express Championship last year in a playoff with Tiger Woods by missing a 3-foot gimme. It is unfortunate, but as more superstars engage in high-stakes gaming, people will naturally harbor suspicions.
College Reputations Are Also at Risk
The potential crisis is not limited to the pros. Timothy A. Kelly,
Ph.D., executive director of the congressional-appointed National
Gambling Impact Study Commission in 1999, concluded in his report
"Gambling Backlash" that sports wagering seriously threatens the
integrity of college sports and puts student-athletes at
considerable risk. "There are student bookies on most campuses and
organized crime is often involved," he wrote.
Citing a University of Michigan survey, he revealed that "more than 5 percent of male student-athletes had provided inside information for gambling purposes, bet on a game in which they participated or accepted money for performing poorly in a game."
Jocks Need the Rush
Sports multimillionaires counter by saying gambling at the track,
the tables or the golf course is legal, it’s their money and they
should be able to do what they want with it -- as long as they don’t
bet on their own sport. It can also be argued that elite athletes
are adrenaline junkies who crave the rush that gambling can provide.
Their lives revolve around risk, competition and the danger of
putting their bodies and futures on the line against impossible
odds.
As Michael Jordan’s late father once said about his son’s
gambling fixation: "Michael doesn’t have a gambling problem; he has a competition problem."
Right after Daly missed that putt to Woods, he flew to Vegas and
lost his entire $750,000 second-place purse, plus about a half mil
more, in five hours. He admits he has a gambling problem. The
question is, has the sports world?
[msnbc.msn.com; www.therx.com, www.commerce.senate.gov/hearings]
Never let defeat have the last word.
-- Tibetan proverb
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SPORTSMANSHIP USER'S GUIDE
How to Prevent Officiating Conflicts of Interest
If you or your organization hires or assigns sports officials, you
need an official conflicts of interest policy. Trusting your
officials’ fairness won’t cut it these days, says the National
Association of Sports Officials.
According to the NASO (whose former president and founder, Barry Mano, also helped draft the Arizona Accord), the three most common failings of conflicts of interest policies are (1) an official thought he or she was so fair that the conflict was not apparent, (2) the association didn’t educate the official or (3) the association didn’t get the information regarding the official’s conflict(s).
The NASO suggests you address the following factors when implementing conflict of interest procedures:
• What school(s) has the official attended and when?
• Has an official’s immediate family or in-laws attended a school?
• Does an official have a financial relationship with a school or coach?
• Does an official have a family or financial relationship with a school employee?
• Has an official ever coached at a school (if so, what sport, what level, how long ago and for what length of time)?
• Has an official worked games involving one of the teams or in one of their leagues?
Once you’ve done this, determine which of the factors apply to your
association (level of play, magnitude of the game, region you’re in,
number of officials in the region, distance between schools, etc.).
Some may apply , some may not. Next, put your policy into your Bylaws (to protect assignors). Then distribute the document to all officials and assignors so everyone has the conflicts list and can alert each other if and when assigning conflicts arise.
And, of course, make sure the person responsible for upholding the policy is never a game assignor.
[Conflicts of Interest Policies -- A Vital Tool for Your Association,
NASO, 2005]
If anything goes bad, I did it.
If anything goes semi-good, we did it.
If anything goes really good, you did it.
That's all it takes to get people
to win football games for you.
-- Paul William "Bear" Bryant, college football coach (1913-1983)
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 COMMENTARY BY
MICHAEL JOSEPHSON
The following is adapted from Michael Josephson's Gabriel Award-winning radio commentaries airing daily on our flagship station, KNX-1070 AM in Southern California, on American Forces Radio worldwide and on other stations throughout the U.S.
Playing for Someone Else
Skip Bertman, now the athletic director at Louisiana State
University, was one of the most successful college baseball coaches
ever, winning five NCAA baseball championships. He often sent his
players off to play with an inspirational story, which he ended by
invoking them to do their best and a reminder: "You represent LSU,
your family and your Maker."
Coach Bertman emphasized the idea that his players were never
simply playing for themselves. He told a story about a young man
named John who played football for Columbia University in the 1930s. Actually, John was on the squad because he had a terrific attitude, not because he was a good player. He was a benchwarmer who hadn’t been in a single game.
During his senior year, John’s father died. When he returned from
the funeral, he asked his coach if he could start in the next game
to honor his dad. The coach couldn’t refuse, but he warned John that it probably would be only for a few plays.
To the coach’s surprise, John played so well he was declared the
game’s most valuable player. When the coach asked him how he was able to play at such a high level after just losing his father,
John said, "My dad came to every game, Coach. You probably saw me walking with him holding his arm. That’s because he was blind. I
figure today was the first time he ever saw me play. I was playing
for my daddy."
It’s amazing how much better all of us can be when we play for
someone else.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
For an archive of Mr. Josephson's commentaries, with audio files, go to: www.charactercounts.org/knxtoc.htm
To receive free weekly e-mail, including all five of Mr. Josephson's commentaries from that week, please sign up at: www.charactercounts.org/newsletters.htm
CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, a project of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics, leads the Pursuing Victory With Honor sports campaign, which is endorsed by the country's leading amateur athletic organizations. The campaign's purpose is to help administrators, athletes, coaches, legislators, officials and parents change personal and organizational decision making and behavior in sports.
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