I'm not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed to admit this, but I think I managed to watch at least six College football bowl games out of the 30+ games that were played and televised this past season. By my own standards I'd like to think that qualifies me as a good sports fan, a red-blooded American and an avid consumer of free-market commercialism. After all, assuming I sat through six entire bowl games, I would have been exposed to a total of about six hours of clocked game time (of which only about 66 minutes was comprised of true play-making action), 700 instant replays, six performances of the National Anthem, countless cut-aways to smiling cheerleaders and 240 television commercials for such valuable household staples as beer, chips and Lexus automobiles.
Last Game Ever?
Helping me to enjoy the full effect of this multi-facted experience were the game announcers, a uniquely talented group of verbal magicians with a knack for capturing references to sports, patriotism and the sponsor's product name all in a single sentence. Case in point: when Auburn lined up for a game-winning field goal in the Tostitos BCS championship game, play-by-play man Brent Musburger commented, "This is for all the Tostitos!" PepsiCo executives must have had sore hands for days from all the high fives.
But amidst all that redundant commentary from game to game I was struck by a singular comment which received repeated mentions by the different announcers. In almost every game, I heard the announcer say, "For most of these seniors, this will be the last organized football game they ever play." I found this comment to be rather sobering, as I'm sure they and their families did as well.
While I realize that the chances of making it to the NFL are extremely remote, I guess I imagined that those odds improved dramatically within the ranks of the best five or 10 college teams in the country. It turns out that while those odds do indeed increase for the top teams, the percent of NFL draft picks even among these elite programs is still remarkably low. And so, days after we were done ringing in the New Year and celebrating bowl victories, the "last game ever" comment was still ringing in my ears. I concluded that it was the perfect punctuation for something we need to keep reminding ourselves every time we see a young person step out onto any field of play: all of this must be kept in perspective.
To What End?
An estimated 40 million kids between the ages of six and 17 play competitive sports in the U.S., reflecting a steady increase in organized youth sports participation over the past two decades. Most of this growth has come from the pre-high school age group of six to 14-year-olds, where the number of youth sports organizations has exploded over that same time frame. And while the number of organizations and participants has sky rocketed, so too has the youth sports "industry," becoming a multi-billion dollar marketplace for all sorts of products, equipment, training facilities and professional instructors for all ages. Whether one measures this trend by hours of time devoted to youth sports, or by dollars spent in support of them, or even by the growing incidence of loony parental behavior on the sidelines, one must nevertheless observe that we have reached a state of exuberance for youth sports bordering on obsession or zealotry. Almost all of us are guilty of it to some degree, and so each of us must stop to ask ourselves, to what end?
In examining the statistics of youth football participation as an example, the answer to that question remains a bit unclear. Consider the following facts. It's been reported that over three million children between ages six and 14 play some form of organized football. And, like most organized youth sports, this age group represents the apex of participation before significant attrition to the sport's involvement sets in. According to the National Federation of High Schools, just over one million students play football in high school, which means that two-thirds of all the younger kids playing in Pop Warner and other youth football leagues hang up their cleats by freshman year. By the way, the number one reason for doing so is that "it wasn't fun anymore."
After high school, the drop off becomes larger. Of the one million high school football players, only about 35,000 (3.5%) go on to play some form of college football. If these football participation estimates are correct, the college player is a rare breed indeed. They represent the surviving 1% of all players who started playing organized football as little kids, and are still at it. And, as the college bowl announcers aptly pointed out, for most of them it's the end of the line. From among those 35,000 college players, the NFL will draft approximately 200 rookies each year to support a work force of about 1,600 total professional players. For those of you keeping up with all of these statistics, that means that the chances of a 12-year-old pee wee player making it to the NFL are about 0.0067%.
So again, we must ask ourselves, to what end are we spending all of this time, energy, money and emotional angst on our kids' sports? It can't be for the promise of a professional career, or even a college scholarship. Statistically that holds no more logic than spending your entire paycheck on lottery tickets each week. Assuming most of us are either smarter or more risk averse than that, then it must be something else. Some possible answers come to mind. The optimistic answer is that our society values the lessons taught by organized sports regarding teamwork, cooperation, sacrifice and hard work, while we also recognize the health benefits of athletic activity within an increasingly sedentary culture. A nice answer would simply be that our kids have so much fun playing these organized sports. The more cynical response would be that we've all gone a bit mad and completely lost our perspective; that somehow we have come to judge a significant portion of our child's human worth by how well he or she does on the field of play relative to his or her peers. Can that really be the answer? Let's hope not.
In the meantime, when we think about the "last game ever" for college football's seniors we should really be thinking about our own kids who are currently playing youth sports. After all, statistically speaking, the vast majority of these kids are already very close to playing the last game they will ever play in that sport. Even without making it to the pros, the college seniors can look back on a fullfilling and satisfying experience. Have we done enough to make sure the same is true for every other kid about to play their own "last game ever?"
