The Cross Over Movement Blog

ESPN.com’s Jeff Pearlman has an interesting article about rooting for the Yankees today. He describes his friend, a former die-hard Yankee fan, who no longer cares deeply about his team. It’s not because they failed to win the World Series, but because failing to win the World Series equals failure. Rooting for the Yankees is no longer fun because if you win the World Series, you did as expected, and if you don’t you failed. Imagine being Joe Torre with that type of pressure. Where is the joy and fun in playing the game?

Unfortunately, Pearlman’s words describe the current youth basketball phenomena, to a certain extent. In some areas, programs, teams, families, basketball is no longer a journey, but a destination. Anything less than a basketball scholarship is failure. I spoke at length with the Women’s Basketball Head Coach at a BCS school last week and she bemoaned the pressure these young players feel and the lack of resources at their disposal to help them make educated decisions.

I certainly do not want to dampen any player’s dreams. However, I am saddened that an entire childhood of basketball can be deemed a failure if a player fails to earn a scholarship. As Pearlman says:

When did a baseball season in New York become solely about the finish line, and not about the journey? How can a team that clawed its way out of a 14½-game hole be deemed a failure for falling to a team — the Cleveland Indians — that features two of the league’s top five starting pitchers? Do the memories of Alex Rodriguez’s 54 home runs and Chien-Ming Wang’s 19 wins and Derek Jeter’s steely determination and Joba Chamberlain’s meteoric rise fade to ashes without a diamond-studded ring?

Is this who we are? Is this what we’ve become?