Outside View
October 4, 2011
Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple and then his death on Oct. 5 has caused just about every newspaper and business and technology magazine and online newsletter to provide its take on what Jobs meant to Apple, and to the world we live in.
Among the analyses I’ve read that could be most helpful to those in leadership of school sports is that of Cliff Kuang, before Jobs' death, in the October 2011 issue of Fast Company. In “What Steve Jobs Can Still Teach Us,” Kuang comments on Jobs’ “ability to see a company from the outside, rather than inside as a line manager.”
Over his career, observes Kuang, “He (Jobs) became less enamored of tech for tech’s sake. He blossomed into a user-experience savant.” He took the “outside view of a user.” Ultimately for Jobs, “usability was more important than capability.”
I suspect it would do us all well to take the same approach to school sports at the local and state levels; that is, to keep thinking about how the programs appear from the outside. How they appear to the end-user.
It’s all well and good that our rules are correct in their philosophy; but if they don’t make sense to end-users or don’t work in practical application, we may have problems. Same is true for our events, and for our technology.
It is impossible to expect complete understanding of all the policies and procedures of school sports or to avoid all controversy when the competing interests of partisans are involved as is the case in athletics. Remembering, therefore, that the task is not to please but to serve is a necessary mindset, because service in this work often means saying “No” or citing violations and requiring forfeits.
But even as we do these necessary but unpleasant things, which we know in advance will not be universally understood and supported, it is good to be mindful of how it all looks from the outside. It is most important that those in the necessary positions of doing these things be professional and consistent, with a steadfast commitment to apply policies and procedures uniformly. When people view the organization from the outside, even if they don’t fully understand or agree with a decision, they must see that each rule is applied identically to every school, without favoritism, and that rules are not just made up as we go along to relieve a pressure point or grease a squeaky wheel.
Cover Story Stats
September 12, 2017
Eight excerpts from the cover story of TIME Magazine, Aug. 24, 2017, “How Kids’ Sports Became a $15 Billion Industry” ...
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The United States Specialty Sports Association, or USSSA, is a nonprofit with 501(c)(4) status, a designation for organizations that promote social welfare. According to its most recent available IRS filings, it generated $13.7 million in revenue in 2015, and the CEO received $831,200 in compensation. The group holds tournaments across the nation, and it ranks youth teams in basketball, baseball and softball. The softball rankings begin with teams age 6 and under. Baseball starts at age 4.
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With the cost of higher education skyrocketing – and athletic department budgets swelling – NCAA schools now hand out $3 billion in scholarships a year. “That’s a lot of chum to throw into youth sports,” says Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society program. “It makes the fish a little bit crazy.”
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The odds are not in anyone’s favor. Only 2% of high school athletes go on to play at the top level of college sports, the NCAA’s Division I. For most, a savings account makes more sense than private coaching. “I’ve seen parents spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars pursuing a college scholarship,” says Travis Dorsch, founding director of the Families in Sport Lab at Utah State University. “They could have set it aside for the damn college.”
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The Internet has emerged as a key middleman, equal parts sorting mechanism and hype machine. For virtually every sport, there is a site offering scouting reports and rankings. Want to know the top 15-and-under girls volleyball teams? PrepVolleyball.com has you covered (for a subscription starting at $37.95 per year). The basketball site middleschoolelite.com evaluates kids as young as 7 with no regard for hyperbole: a second-grader from Georgia is “a man among boys with his mind-set and skill set”; a third-grader from Ohio is “pro-bound.”
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Children sense that the stakes are rising. In a 2016 study published in the journal Family Relations, Dorsch and his colleagues found that the more money families pour into youth sports, the more pressure their kids feel – and the less they enjoy and feel committed to their sport.
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There are few better places to take the measure of the youth sports industrial complex than the Star, the gleaming, 91-acre, $1.5 billion new headquarters and practice facility of the Dallas Cowboys. Turn left upon entering the building and you’ll find the offices of Blue Star Sports, a firm that has raised more than $200 million since April 2016 to acquire 18 companies that do things like process payments for club teams, offer performance analytics for seventh-grade hoops games and provide digital social platforms for young athletes.
Blue Star’s investors include Bain Capital; 32 Equity, the investment arm of the NFL; and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who leases Blue Star space in his headquarters. The company’s goal is to dominate all aspects of the youth sports market, and it uses an affiliation with the pros to help. -
Across the US, the rise in travel teams has led to the kind of facilities arms race once reserved for big colleges and the pros. Cities and towns are using tax money to build or incentivize play-and-stay mega-complexes, betting that the influx of visitors will lift the local economy.
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There are mounting concerns, however, over the consequences of such intensity, particularly at young ages. The average number of sports played by children ages 6 to 17 has dipped for three straight years, according to the Sports &Fitness Industry Association. In a study published in the May issue of American Journal of Sports Medicine, University of Wisconsin researchers found that young athletes who participated in their primary sport for more than eight months in a year were more likely to report overuse injuries.
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Intense specialization can also tax minds. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “burnout, anxiety, depression and attrition are increased in early specializers.” The group says delaying specialization in most cases until late adolescence increases the likelihood of athletic success.
Devotion to a single sport may also be counterproductive to reaching that Holy Grail: the college scholarship. In a survey of 296 NCAA Division I male and female athletes, UCLA researchers discovered that 88% played an average of two to three sports as children.
Other consequences are more immediate. As expensive travel teams replace community leagues, more kids are getting shut out of organized sports. Some 41% of children from households earning $100,000 or more have participated in team sports, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. In households with income of $25,000 or less, participation is 19%.