Money and competition for college access changed—and corrupted—youth sports “when we weren’t looking.” That’s the claim in Linda Flanagan’s recent book Take Back the Game. According to Flanagan, families often see youth sports as strengthening children’s physical health, character, friendships, and opportunities for athletic scholarships at universities. But Flanagan argues that youth sports have turned into an insidious ecosystem that does more harm than good. In her highly readable book, Flanagan convincingly diagnoses the problem with youth sports today by integrating data from current research and her own interviews with about 50 medical professionals, scholars, coaches, and former youth athletes. To close the book, she produces a series of prescriptions to the problem, some of which seem a little impractical and leave the reader wondering what can realistically be done. Even so, the book offers valuable insights that every parent with school-aged children should carefully consider.
The Youth Sports Industry
Flanagan argues that kids used to have low-cost and free options for organized sports, often through community-funded recreational programs and non-profit organizations. But starting in the 1970s, this community-based structure for youth sports began getting cut as local municipalities grappled with inflation, fiscal deficits, and a declining national economy. Soon thereafter, private organizations stepped in and slowly started to replace low-cost recreational programs across the country.
The key difference with private youth sports organizations is that they expected young players to pay more and travel more frequently to away games across state lines. Hotel chains, sports brands, and city leaders began looking for ways to cash in through sporting events and tournaments for youth. Eventually, privately funded teams became the dominant, if not sole, option for youth sports in many places throughout the country.
A study by WinterGreen Research estimated the value of youth sports totaled about $19 billion, which is several billions more than the NFL, the most valuable professional sports league in the United States. The same study projects that the youth sports industry will continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next several years. According to Flanagan, this massive industry leaves low-income families who cannot pay without sports while being a financial burden for many other families.
Higher Education
Institutions of higher education also contribute to the youth sports mania. Flanagan reports that when U.S. News and World Report began publishing annual rankings of colleges in the early 1980s, athletics became a significant way for universities to boost rankings, enrollments, and budgets. Universities began hiring professional coaches and carrying out extensive recruitment efforts.
To attract talent, colleges started offering athletes advantages in admissions, including early admissions and financial aid. These trends have continued unabated. For example, the total amount of NCAA scholarships awarded annually was over $3.5 billion in 2019, an increase of 1,340 percent since the 1990s. What’s more, the top 25 most valuable college football programs generate $1.5 billion in annual profit from mostly broadcast deals, donors, and ticket sales. The University of Oklahoma’s football team now earns an average profit of nearly $81 million each year.
Parents
According to Flanagan, the youth sports ecosystem is also perpetuated by parental anxieties over college. Over the past three decades, average acceptance rates at top-ranked higher education institutions plummeted from 27% to 6%. At the same time, public spending on higher education was cut and tuition increased considerably. Tempted by the prospect of admissions and financial advantages, many parents came to see sports success as the key to their children’s future. Parents began accepting excessive demands on children’s and families’ time and tolerating exorbitant expenses for sports. In a 2019 Harris Poll, parents reported spending about a third of their income and twelve hours per week on children’s sports. The same poll found that half of parents did so with an expectation of an athletic scholarship.
Take Back the Game does not really interrogate parents’ beliefs sufficiently. First, fears over their kids not getting into college are overblown. While college acceptance rates at elite institutions are shrinking, this is partially because of large increases in the number of students applying. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of schools actually increased their admissions rates over 15 years, and more than half of universities and colleges admitted at least two-thirds of applicants in 2017. Second, athletics is not actually the best source of college funding. While $3.5 billion in NCAA scholarships sounds impressive, that total pales in comparison to the $22 billion awarded annually for merit-based academic scholarships. Only about one-third of NCAA athletes receive any financial aid related to sports, and only 1% receive full scholarships.
The Toll on Children
Notably sidelined in this ecosystem: the kids. In the race for profit and college opportunities, Flanagan contends that parents and coaches stopped paying attention to what is happening with their kids and listening to what they really want. Flanagan shows how competitive play, demanding coaches, and increased stakes for athletic success have led to family life often revolving around children’s sports—disrupting and usurping family time and taking an unfortunate human toll.
Meanwhile, Flanagan says that the trend of over-training and over-specializing has been associated with higher rates of psychological distress for athletes and a dramatic increase in over-use injuries. Trained by coaches with too much power, too little oversight, and an ultimatum to win, many kids have become victims of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.
How to Take Back the Game
Flanagan’s book persuasively demonstrates why it is essential to “take back the game.” To close the book, Flanagan proposes some remedies to do so. Some are far-fetched “nuclear options”—such as “blowing up” varsity college sports and replacing these with intramural options or establishing a federal agency to regulate sports. She admits that neither seems likely considering Americans’ love of college sports and disdain for federal involvement in local affairs.
Flanagan sees more hope in the individual choices of community members, coaches, and parents. She argues that if anyone can get caught up in the ecosystem’s rules, anyone can change them. Parents and coaches can resist the urge to specialize and see through the myth of athletics as a college ticket. Parents can say no to overbearing training or away games across state lines.
Here, however, Flanagan’s emphasis on individual resistance as a remedy partly ignores her own diagnosis. She presents compelling evidence that if coaches veer from current trends, they may be out of a job. If parents “say no” to travel or overtraining, their kids may be dropped from a team and left without sports altogether. Moreover, many coaches and parents are not passive victims but active perpetuators of the ecosystem.
Flanagan’s best advice for “taking back the game” is a coordinated effort of multiple actors to lessen the grip of money in youth sports and to reintroduce low-stakes community-based teams. Again, the book is a little unclear on how such coordination would take shape and bring about substantive change. Nevertheless, the book is quite clear that our children’s well-being depends on reforming youth sports one way or another.
Author Bio
Elizabeth A. Zumpe is Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Oklahoma.
