Perspectives on Childhood, Education, and Parenting
March Madness? The NCAA Dictating Academic Standards “There is no such place as the ‘big time.’ The ‘big time’ is where you are.” Author Unknown
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By Tom Northrup
ecently a friend asked me if any of the Penn teams I played on had gone ”dancing,” that is, participated in March Madness— the NCAA basketball tournament. Our 1965-66 team earned a spot, Tom Northrup but our invitation was rescinded three days before we were to play in the East Regional in Blacksburg, VA. Why? Essentially because the adults in charge couldn’t get along. The roadblock emerged from the fact that the NCAA had issued a decree that all student athletes applying to college had to demonstrate they could achieve a 1.6 grade point average (D+/C-). The
Ivy League presidents and athletic directors took the position that an athletic association (NCAA) had no business micromanaging college admission standards and policies. The result? Our team learned three days before we were to play Syracuse that we should unpack our bags. Today’s fans may not realize that until 1985, there were only 32 or fewer teams (22 in 1966) in the tournament. To make the ”Final Four,” a team only needed to win two or three games. Now with a 68-team field, all-consuming television coverage, office pools, bracketology, and sports talk radio, March Madness generates over a billion dollars annually for the participating schools and the NCAA. The distribution of this revenue, and whether the players should receive some, is currently being considered by the Supreme Court. My opinion on this issue isn’t the subject here. Instead, by taking a step backward, I’d like to offer a perspective on how parents should think about their children’s participation in sports outside of school: Sports should not be pursued or thought of as a ticket to anywhere; the experience itself provides its value. Learning to work hard, to be a good teammate, to put others before self are the lasting benefits. Excellence may result in a favorable college
placement or scholarship, but don’t count on it. Children learn more from losing than from winning. Dealing with disappointment is a far better preparation for life. Those opportunities should be embraced. Recent books such as Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character and Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance explain why. Short term pain often leads to long-term gain. Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, explains that our memories of our life events are governed by our two selves—the “experiencing self ” (how we actually feel at the time of the experience), and the “remembering self ” (how we remember the event later—often much later. Frequently these two “selves” are not aligned. Fifty-five years later, reflecting on being denied the opportunity to play in an NCAA tournament, my ”remembering self ” tried to make it seem significant, but it simply was not a major blow. While we were disappointed that a compromise wasn’t reached, the consensus of my teammates was that the Ivy League was justified in standing on principle, and our lives quickly moved on. What my “remembering self ” tells me now is that the lessons learned on the fields and courts of my childhood in Parkersburg, West Virginia were the formative ones.
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Country ZEST & Style | Spring 2021
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