brad's thoughts on high school sports today

High School sports are becoming destroyed.  Idiotic rich parents have gone way overboard and have pimped their kids literally. They have made kids leave life-long friends to go to schools in which they might be able to get more "exposure".  In Oregon for example, take a look at the teams during the last 7-8 years who are conistently doing well in sports and tell me schools aren't recruiting or at least benefitting of being a rich school with exposure.  Portland's PIL used to be a proud league that could compete in everything, and now it struggles in football and in baseball. 

This trend will only continue as parents more and more will depend on college scholorships to send their kids to good schools.  Not many will make it, but crazy parents will try.  This is dangerous, and puts way too much pressure on kids.  Look, I can't stand the hippy-yippy liberals who have bullied their way to little league boards and soccer boards and preach about sportsmanship and push their policy of "Nobody wins, let's all just have fun and not keep score"  That's bullshit to me.  The kids from the earliest of ages need to understand about winning and losing.  If their little feelings get hurt, oh well, they're going to scratch a knee once in a while - deal with it. 

But, there comes a time when things go way overboard, and that time is now.  Parents need to not let their kids change schools and not push kids to change schools just so the kids can get exposure.  Parents like this must understand they have made for non-competitive sports and leagues and destroyed the balance of good quality fair competition.

Crazy parents at sporting events?  As long as the parents are being positive and cheering, great.  Positivity is always good and can be totally funny.  Parents that go nuts on umpires and refs, they need to get lives and stop doing that.  Kids don't need any help like that, and it only sets a bad example.  Where I played Little League we had a strict policy.  The policy was an umpire could boot a fan from the grounds at any time if the fan was being an asshole.  I think that might even have been written in the bylaws.  Everyone knows what an asshole is.