DEEP DIVE: Linda Flanagan on Taking Back Kids' Sports

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0:31Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret.

0:37Linda Flanagan:And this is Amy. And today we're talking to Linda Flanagan. She is a journalist, researcher, and a former cross-country and track coach. She's also a founding board member of the Positive Coaching Alliance and an advisory group member for the Aspen Institute's Reimagining Sports Initiative. Linda is a mother of three and a lifelong athlete. She lives with her family in New Jersey, and her new book is Take Back the Game, How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids Sports and Why It Matters. Welcome, Linda. Thank you. It's nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Money and mania, which is worse? Is it money or the mania?

1:13Yes, they're inextricably linked. You can't separate one from the other, I'm afraid. They're both terrible, though.

1:20Linda Flanagan:So, I mean, we can see it with our own eyes, right, that youth sports has transformed dramatically from the backyard wiffle ball that happened when I was a kid. But walk us through some of the main ways that you believe youth sports have changed and commodified in the last couple of decades. Right. You know, I do think it's important to acknowledge that there's always been issues with youth sports. You know, just this morning, I was watching a Saturday Night Live skit from about 30 years ago that had Will Ferrell as an insane parent in the stand, you know, shrieking at his son. And it was hilarious, you know.

1:55So these problems have been around for a while. What's changed is that, well, I identify three main things. The first is money. There's a ton of money invested in youth sports. A lot of adults count on the money coming from parents to, you know, pay their mortgages and pay their staff. It's a massive industry. It's now a$19 billion industry, which is kind of hard to fathom when you compare it to the NFL, which is a$15 billion industry.

2:23Linda Flanagan:All right. So break that down. So the NFL spends or earns for everybody around it$15 billion a year. Correct. Sports for kids. Do you include college in that? Like what sports are included in the$19 billion? Yes. It's a large number that's sort of bandied about all the time. Any article you read about youth sports, it talks about it being a$19 billion industry. And this is a number that came from Wintergreen Research, which is an organization that really studies youth sports. And that$19 billion goes to, it's really the biggest companies are Nike, Adidas, the other equipment manufacturers, about five of them, the media companies, the sports media companies, ESPN, the Sky Network, Yes Network.

3:06And then there are others like Gatorade and actually UFC. So it's just a giant, giant industry. You know, there are more investors in it as well and more technology companies that are, you know, startups trying to get in on this. It's, you know, as one of my subjects said, it's there's never been a better time to invest in new sports than now. Well, and there has to be some sort of trickle down or trickle up effect. Maybe my husband is from a small town in Texas and made famous by the Friday Night Lights. The idea that like in these crazy places, people I mean, I think that book's probably 20, maybe 25 years old.

3:45Yeah. That the idea that like, wait a minute, guys, there are stadiums where high school kids play and there are jumbotrons in that stadium. And now that's every school. I mean, we played growing up on fields, right? Like it was there was a field out back and that's where the sports happened. But it seems to me now that that's the norm. So one of the biggest catalysts for the change in youth sports happened in 1997 when Disney made a decision to open the wide world of sports complex in Florida. And what I learned in my research on this is that it was a very conscious decision on the part of executives to try to get, as they put it, more heads in beds.

4:26That's how they make money is renting out, you know, getting people to go to their hotels and theme parks. But they recognized that they were losing the teenage cohort because, you know, teenagers aren't so interested in the Magic Kingdom anymore. So they made a calculated decision to build the Wide World of Sports complex to attract families with teenagers and is proved to be wildly successful. Now, the number is always changing. But when I last checked, it was a 700 ,000 square feet of playing fields.

4:57Linda Flanagan:I mean, it was news to me, too, that Disney built Wide World of Sports to create tournaments so that people would come to Disney. I mean, it makes sense when you hear it. Yeah. But that's trickled down to you got to be taking your fourth grader to a lacrosse tournament in Orlando because that's just best practices now for a kid playing sports. Right. That's where the trickle down really affects. Yes. All of us. It's become what you have to do, not what you could do if you wanted to. Yes. Well, and since the Wide World of Sports Complex opened, there have been 10 times the number of those sports facilities have opened up.

5:30So since 1997, there are now something like 30 ,000 of those complexes, obviously not as large as Disney's, but I mean, that is a massive number. That's why you have jumbotrons all over the place that used to be reserved just for Texas. And it is the expectation that if your child has an interest in sports, that they're going to be on these teams and travel hither and yon to be seen and to stay competitive as much as anything. I think one thing that has really changed, and it's kind of a big question, but it seems like the underlying question is what is the point of sports? Why pursue sports? And that that has sort of changed from like, it keeps you out of mom and dad's hair.

6:13And like, it's something to fill your days and get out there and like kids like sports, you know, there's always my dad loved sports. And you know, he was born in the 30s. ended up being a bat boy, was very into sports, but certainly his parents had no involvement of that. Basically, he lived near Ebbets Field. He would walk over to the Ebbets Field is a huge oldie locks alert. Back in my day, it was the Brooklyn Dodgers Stadium back in the 40s. What do people see as the point of sports now? Well, you know, it depends on who you ask. But I think most parents would still cling to the idea or at least articulate the idea that they want their kids to play because of the valuable life lessons and the discipline and exercise and teamwork and these kinds of ideals about what, you know, probably why your father played sports and why I played sports, why my parents wanted me to play sports, because it kept us out of trouble.

7:09It was a constructive activity and you could learn some things. And I think most parents would say that today, at least when they start. But I think over time, the investment of time and money becomes so great. If your child continues to play in high school, through high school, if they started in elementary school playing on a travel team, and suddenly it is just ballooned into this all-encompassing activity, there has to be some other reason besides, well, they learn life lessons. And I think what I've seen and learned from parents is that there's the default posture, which is, well, it should help her get into a better college.

7:46It's like there has to be some greater goal than just, you know, learning discipline. And I think it has, you know, unfortunately, and this is so disillusioning to me as a coach when I started coaching to learn that by high school, this is a real, you know, a very big concern for a lot of parents that it wasn't about what sports could do for the kids' growth and development. It was about what it could do for their college prospects. at least.

8:13Linda Flanagan:Which is not to put all the blame on the sports because you do talk in the book about the more time we invest, the more we spend. You give us a bit of research that says families spend $693 per year, per kid, per sport. So if you've got three kids each playing a couple of sports, right? And we're spending every weekend standing around in some field for a tournament, two hours from our house, right? And staying in hotels. The more time we spend, the more money we spend, the more invested we become. And then, I mean, you can lose the script as a parent, right? You can have your kids saying, I don't want to do this anymore.

8:43Linda Flanagan:And you're like, what do you mean? I just hired you a pitching coach. What do you mean you don't want to do it anymore? We're 20 grand into this thing. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And by the way, that number, that 693 number, that is a very conservative estimate. Yeah. It sounds low. Yeah. That's only for, that was an Aspen Institute study along with the families in sport lab at Utah State that looked at just families that had kids in, you know, like the non-private programs. If you there are other studies looking at the cost of sports for families that only do the private teams and the numbers are much higher, something like 20 percent or 25 percent pay 500 a month per child and some 20 percent pay 12 ,000 a year per child.

9:27You know, it depends very much on what kind of level of sports they're playing. It can be astronomical. And it does seem in our conversation so far about sports that I have three children, none of whom play organized sports. I had a kid who was a gymnast and he lost interest in it. But my kids play a lot of sports. We have usually like a bunch of kids come over Friday night and they always organize a game, whether it's sharks and minnows or basketball pickup or stick, whatever they play, you know. And the reason they do it is because it's fun. And it's interesting that we've had this long of a conversation about sports.

10:02And I think that's the first time we've used that word. That's a very good point, you know, and that kind of free play, like you talk about with your son doing, that's where kids really learn the most from sports. You know, I don't know if you ever interviewed the psychologist Peter Gray, who wrote, he's kind of the authority on free play. He's like, his argument is that this is where kids actually learn their life lessons and about getting along with others. because it's when adults aren't standing around enforcing rules and telling them to tuck in their uniforms that kids have to figure out how to keep other kids playing, how to, you know, balance teams.

10:42The goal is to keep the game going. So you have to kind of negotiate and compromise with all the kids on the team. You have to modify the rules as need be, depending on skill level. And that it's this kind of free play that in which kids really learn and in which it's fun because the The point is to have fun. And like your son's experience, that's what's lost when it's strictly organized stuff.

11:07Linda Flanagan:The other thing we hear about sports is that the reason our kids have to do them is that they build character. We're gonna take a break and find out when we come back if that's true or not. We're talking to Linda Flanagan and her new book is Take Back the Game. Hey there, it's Ophira Eisenberg from Parenting is a Joke. And I have a great tip for your next vacation. At Great Wolf Lodge, there's adventure for the whole family. You and your pack can splash away in the indoor water park where it is always 84 degrees. There is a massive wave pool, a lazy river, and tons of water slides for your pack to enjoy together.

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13:16Linda Flanagan:Okay, so Linda, everybody knows sports build character, right? That's been proven. That's totally true. And that's why they have to play sports, right? Or not so much? Well, as we know, as I know, and if you read my book, you'll learn, there's actually no evidence. This is fascinating to me. You know, it is such an assumption we have that sports build character. But, you know, there's a meta analysis done not long ago of 40 years of research on the impact of sports on character development. And there's no evidence that it's not automatic. In other words, there's no evidence that playing sports improves moral reasoning or sportsmanship.

13:53There's no evidence of it. You know, again, it's very hard to convey this fine line between showing that there's no evidence that this exists and also up against everyone who's ever played sports, who says, sports changed my life. They made me a better person. I learned how to get along with people. I learned discipline. You know, employers often want to hire athletes, former athletes, because they think they're the most disciplined, the most hardworking. So while there's no evidence that it is automatic that sports build character, there's a lot of certainly anecdotal and there's every reason to believe that sports have an impact on kids' development.

14:33But it can be negative as easily as it can be positive. I think that's a crucial takeaway. You can learn all kinds of bad things in sports and it's entirely dependent on the context.

14:43Linda Flanagan:But the point, you know, that your overall point is that the corruption of youth sports has made the positive takeaways less possible than in the past, right? And the money is one factor, the intensity. Can we talk about that a little bit, the sort of over-specialization and what that can do to kids? Yes. Well, you know, the stakes have changed for kids and parents, and I'm sure you've talked about this in other podcast episodes, but, you know, the whole nature of childhood has changed in the last 50 or so years. And so that now parents, it's not that your parents and my parents didn't love us as much as we love our kids, but they expressed it differently.

15:22And, you know, contemporary parents, and I include myself in this, we feel that our kids' accomplishments are a reflection of our skill and talent as parents. And so when kids do well, we, you know, We sort of bask in that reflected glow. And when they do poorly, we feel embarrassed or need to correct the problem. What our kids do seems to be a reflection of our ability as parents. And that's something that's different. I think parents have always been proud of their kids when they've done well, and there's no shame in that. But it feels more closely attached to our egos. And this has affected the way sports have evolved over the last couple of decades so that as parents are spending more and as more money has trickled into the system, there's more and more pressure for kids to take up one sport at a young age and to play it constantly.

16:18And so you have these monetary factors encouraging more play and you have these social kind of, you know, sort of subterranean influences on parents that make it seem like it's really important that our children succeed publicly. And then it just becomes very high stakes. I was going to ask, is that specialization, is the goal of it that this kid will then become so good that they'll get scholarships? Or is it just that like, if you only focus on one thing, you can be the best and I can say, my kid is the best soccer player in town. Like, do you have a sense of where that line is for people? I don't, but I think it's kind of all of the above.

17:00I mean, I think it's pitched to parents as if you want your kid to stay competitive, you know, they should really join the fourth grade travel lacrosse team.

17:10Linda Flanagan:And P.S., the travel lacrosse team in fourth grade now has rankings. You make this point in the book that maybe didn't exist 20 years ago. This idea that your kid is being judged among his or her peers is starting easier and earlier and online and everywhere. And also those teams have, you know, A, B and C levels. So we can start stratifying them when they're eight, nine years old. And that's just so pernicious and destructive. And, you know, counter to what we like to think sports do, which is to build character and community and camaraderie and teamwork. And that's just utterly corrupting of that.

17:45And then it excludes a bunch of kids also at a younger and younger age who don't get to play because they're not good enough to be on the fourth grade lacrosse team. It just that feels you're really not getting a lot of lessons in life when you're being told you sit on the sidelines because you're not good. Well, I don't know if you recall the example I give in my book of a woman who runs this like very little humble lacrosse program like for kids in our town. And she said she gets more and more phone calls from parents asking if it's too late for their kindergartner to start playing lacrosse because, you know, maybe they should have started when they were three.

18:25I mean, it's kind of insane. You can't almost even fathom it. But the thinking is that you've got to start earlier and earlier and devote yourself more and more, more time, more expense. if your child is going to have a chance to stay competitive. A lot of it is sort of a fear of missing out and, you know, anxiety, parental anxiety. I think parents are so worried about their kids falling behind or being left out somehow. And it also reflecting back on them as, you know, having kind of botched it. But does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Because Amy and I have had this debate that my basic view was, I'm going to let my kids, I'm not a sports mom.

19:03I don't want to stand on the sidelines. I'll let my kids pursue whatever sport they want in high school. That's what I did. I never played sports as a kid, played volleyball in high school. I wasn't great. I was made the varsity by senior year, whatever. But I mean, we've had this discussion of like, is that even a possibility anymore that you can just be a kid who walks onto a team in the ninth grade?

19:21Linda Flanagan:Right, right. I said that you can't play high school basketball if you weren't playing AAU club basketball in grade school in areas with large populations. You won't make the team. I think it's a little bit out on that. And I also think that it depends very much on the sport. There are some sports in which it makes no difference, like running, my favorite sport. You can take it up. Yes, my kid is taking up cross country in ninth grade, never played a sport in his life. No cut. Good job. See, you know what? No cut. And also, you can't help but improve. Like improvement is kind of, whether you like it or not, you're going to get better.

19:56If you run every day, and if you've never run before, and you take it up in ninth grade, you might just suddenly find that you have this talent you didn't know you had. And it doesn't require having started in fourth grade. The skill-based sports, it's tougher to enter into those sports when if you're a ninth grader and you want to start playing volleyball, say, and meanwhile, your peers started playing when they were eight. So they've been playing for five or six, seven years now, and you're just starting out. It kind of depends in part on the athleticism of the person. If your son or daughter is like super naturally athletic, they might be able to pick it up.

20:35And on the other hand, some of those kids are going to quit because they're tired of it. So meanwhile, they've just gotten to what should be for many kids, the pinnacle of their play in high school, and they're just sick to death of it.

20:49Linda Flanagan:And they don't want to play anymore. There's one thing I wanted to talk about for parents of older kids, it's a very fair thing to be worried about, which is college education costing$300 ,000 these days at a private college. And that an athletic scholarship is not only a way to offset some of those costs that you're not sure how you're going to pay, but a way to get your kid into a school. It's a way to make them stand out. Like parents aren't making that up, but that system and the way the colleges recruit athletes, I just wanted to touch on that for a moment, is another way in which youth sports have been corrupted and drifted from their ostensible goals.

21:23Yes. Well, and I think to the point where if we did away with college sports, which of course will never happen, it would transform the youth sports landscape because it's as colleges have gotten more, at least the perception is that they're so much more competitive. It's a little hard to figure because there's so many more kids applying, but the perception is that they're more competitive. They're much more expensive, as you just said. And it just seems impossible for some, you know, maybe your parents got in and it was a lot, you know, if you're the parent and you remember what it was like for you to get into college, and now it seems like suddenly your child may not be able to get into that school anymore.