A day that shall live in infamy!

Maybe some of you have not gotten around to reading yesterdays post, but it was one of a kind. I did it over-dosed on cough medicine and about 16 hours of sleep. As you can see the syntax, spelling, typographical and grammatical errors are about 2-3 times more prevelant than any post before. I thought about trying to edit it today, but the blogger software sometimes screws up when you do that and I kind of like the sick/over-medicated post. It should give me some street cred as they say in the NBA. What an effin joke that is.

Reading it today, I don't even know what the heck I was talking about. But, since I feel much better today, I thought I would post again in a more honest and healthy effort.

Speaking of Street Cred......Idiot Athletes strike again! Ben Burgerbrain got himself into a motorcycle accident not wearing a helmet and managed to break every bone in his face and JJ "I'm the sensitive educated athlete" Redick got himself a DWI. Since I am a coach, I talk about this kind of stuff all the time. It's such a simple concept to me that I don't understand why other athletes don't get it. It makes a person like me just want to scream like a crazy person cause it makes you feel crazy when you feel like the only one doing something. People nod their heads at you and say they understand and yes it makes perfect sense and they don't get it either and then.......they're right on the other side doing the stupid thing you just spent 4 hours talking about. Anyway, here is what I think happened sometime around 25 years ago. The roles/priorities switched.

It used to be that being an athlete was a cherished thing. People idolized what they did and how they did it and their talent and their ability to perform and act beyond the normal human being. It was a position that was respected and those who wanted to be athletes held themselves to a much higher standard than regular people. Basically an athlete had the same sort of personality and values as a priest, soldier, astronaut, etc. that knew that they were special and had to follow rules and guidelines that WERE different if they wanted to BE different. Being an athlete required much much more than a standard human effort. Thats what made them great, thats what made their legacies live on and on. Gehrig, Bird, Jordan, Gretsky, Rice, Dedrickson, Redgrave etc. considered athletics more than just an activity, it was their job 24/7, and they treated it as such.

Now, I don't know how this happened. I have a few theories but nothing hard proven; but somehow athletes now believe they have a right/responsibility to act like a normal person. However, their perception of what that is is skewed by the fact that they have superiority complexes without the intelligence or the title to back it up. . They don't want to go to bed early and treat their bodies with respect and stay away from drugs, parties, suspicious characters, dangerous situations. In fact, they think that they get to party more so than normal people and they have some kind of "right" to do so. Movies and current stars hype up that the athletic life is supposed to be rock starish. Drugs Sex etc. If you look deep enough, you see that the REAL athletes don't act this way or anything like it.

I think its because sports has been much more inclusive these days than in the past. Every single kid is on some kind of sports team these days. The amount of people in college these days is nearly double the amount of 25 years ago, which doubles the amount of college athletes. The lack of quality coaching and quality athletes has created a new animal. The values got lost in an effort to make everyone feel included and now a bunch of people who have no right considering themselves "athletes" are athletes and have changed the values for all their teammates which includes the real athletes. Its the same sort of thing as a small business expanding too fast for its own good. Quality goes down as production increases beyond the means of control. Defects/bad product increase 2 times as much the amount the company expanded.

How do we fix it? Better coaching, less athletes, better role models in pro sports. We all chastise people like Bobby Knight, Bear Bryant, Coach K for being too hard on the athletes. Basically, the athletes are way too pampered at the basic level and there needs to be a radical move back to the past. Discipline once they are already in is almost useless if coaches and athletes don't start chaging the way the athletes are developed to begin with. The discipline doesn't change the way people think and act, just punishes them for what they do. The hype and image of how athletes act is in a viscious cycle of mediocre and bad athletes acting the hyped/skewed image and taking all the athletes down with them through peer pressure.

The media can't help us because the major sports are way to infested with bad seeds and they wouldn't have anything to show if they secluded the athletes who are problems. So the movement has to be from the ground up.

New blogger of the week is updated today too. Is she available? I would marry her in a second. Then again, I would marry a Krispy Kreme in a second too.........Maybe she likes guys who would marry Krispy Kremes?

This post written while listening to: Sufjan Stevens "Come on Feel the Illionoise!"