(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Talking with some fellow Illinois fans not that long ago, they mentioned that they were hoping the Illini basketball team could land recruits Jabari Parker, Thomas Hamilton, Jr., and Alex Foster, each of whom, one fan assured me, has a "ridiculous upside potential."
I'm sure they do. I'm also sure that a Google search shows them to be incoming high school freshman who have never played a second of high school basketball.
It's by no means an isolated situation, nor a new one. Routinely, we're finding athletes at younger ages, especially in basketball, always on the look out for the next LeBron, the next Kobe, or the next Garnett.
It's not just there. Sidney Crosby, Justin Upton, Bryce Harper, and Freddy Adu come to mind. So do the drafts every year, and the joke that when two athletes spawn a shoe company cuts the umbilical cord.
Sports hypersters find themselves writing in the future tense. Whereas writers of great fiction, history, and the sciences write in the past and journalists in the present, the sports pundits flood their sentences with "will," the expletive that makes Mel Kiper sound like Nostradamus every year.
Jason Smith will plug a Pace-sized hole and fit on the Rams for years to come. Terrelle Pryor will be a Heisman Trophy candidate. Ronnie Fiels will be an NBA All-Star.
We do build quite a few expectations for young men who have been treated like gods their entire post-pubescent lives, don't we?
It's nothing new. Tiger Woods was winning majors before he was actually winning majors. The imaginary green jackets hang behind Mark Prior's Cy Youngs in a very swank trophy case.
Largely, looking to tomorrow is human nature. In a zero-sum game like sports, the only way to cope with not being a champion is to pray next year will be better. Betting on tomorrow may have a horrible track record, but it certainly trumps living with .450 winning percentage.
Even if one's team is depleted of prospects or draft hopes, the thought of the next MJ or Unitas or Mantle is enough to buy season tickets another year.
I bring up this obsession with tomorrow that seems embedded into humanity not to make sports fans ponder the effect upon sports or on the sporting culture, but rather that of the athletes in question. Like cast-off child starts, we ridicule the names of "busts" like Ryan Leaf, Cherno Samba, and Darko Milicic for not living up to the expectations we placed upon them.
Filling anyone's head with the idea that they'll be great sets a dangerously high standard for just breaking even. For Todd Marinovich, just making the NFL was a huge disappointment. Stop and think about that for a second.
Factor in that these many of those being told they'll play in the "big show" are teenagers and the potential problems should become readily apparent. Handlers spin the myths new heights and the suddenly the kids believe in destiny, they come to plan two, three, four years down the road. Heck, Bryce Harper thinks he's going to the Hall of Fame.
Dreams are wonderful, but they were meant to be individual, not societal, shared, or taken as prediction. When one considers that males between 16-20 undergo radical shifts in maturity, priorities, and attitudes, it seems outrageous we pack so much emotional baggage on their shoulders.
0 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete