Jersey Jazzman recounts stories of high school sports teams recruiting players from other districts to help them in the competitive world of athletic competition. He explains why this has happened. It goes hand-in-hand with our current misguided belief that education as it was once understood–that is, the development of each child in mind, body, and character– has been replaced by purely utilitarian goals: education for college and career.
He writes:
“Our obsession with creating an education system whose primary function is to feed the job market is inevitably going to lead to behaviors like this. We are teaching the kids that their number one goal is to get what they can, whatever the cost. Civic pride, like playing for your home town, is a quaint notion; loyalty and teamwork are valuable only in what they can do for you as an individual. Of course, this is a natural response to being used: if big universities and TV networks and apparel brands are going to make a ton of dough off of student athletes, those players will naturally want their cut. That is the beauty of the unrestrained free market.”
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/01/professionalizing-high-school-sports.html#sthash.cDKkB2Ml.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very young children are being recruited for youth league sports in some places.
A father talks about his 3-year-old son being recruited to play football in the first episode of Friday Night Tykes, a horrifying reality show about youth league football in San Antonio.
You can see it here starting at 12:45:
I know several students who are not Jocks, who asked their patents to home school them. These are excellent students who get pushed to the side in FAVOR of those who play sports in high school. Tooooooo strange and smacks of elitism for jocks. Give me a chef any day.
I AGREE. It’s out of control. Reminds me of the Roman coliseum.
What’s needed, of course, is privatization. “And welcome to the field the Lockheed Middle School Drones!”
And why can’t we do sponsorship from birth? Gene sequences done prenatally could be forwarded to Pfizer, Halliburton, and so on, and they could bid on them. Then, their logos could be tattooed on the kids’ foreheads.
YEARS ago when in high school the mantra was: It is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. How many coaches would keep their job now if they subscribed to that philosophy? Believe it or not, when I played football the coach could not call plays. If a sub came in to play, he could not say anything in the huddle. A referee put his head into the huddle to make sure of that. – Vince Lombardi’s the ONLY thing is winning has superseded that “outdated” view. Progress? Not in my book.
The NFL is incorporated as a non-profit. Kinda like Eva and Success.
http://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/end-the-nfl-s-charity-tax-break
This is new?
High school, college, & national sports are exploiting players not only as moneymakers to team owners, coaches, & players but to the expense of players’ health risks.
It is comparable to how corporations are making money off tax payers selling their curriculum, testing materials, computers, and professional development courses to schools, where kids’ futures are sacrified to make some people rich.
For example, football players are subjected to hard hits that result in bodily injury and concussions that can result in cognitive disability (dementia, & suicide), death from heat stroke while practices in high temperatures, and long-term injuries from repetitive hard jarring contact (like students who are required to take test after test to prove their worthiness to test makers).
These injuries are less important than winning a game in the moment (like students who gets physically and psychologically ill because of the upped rigor in CCSS).
The game has been sensationalized at an early age, so that young players are asked to do more and be more agressive to make the game more competitive. The focus in recuitment are all stats related & the physical size of the player. Players have to become bigger in height and weight. (like many students who can’t hold a pencil correctly in kindergarten because of fine motor skills not yet developed).
They are gladiators even before college. But there are only so many spots to make the college & NFL team (like students who feel defeated after trying hard cannot attend college because they couldn’t pass high stakes assessments).
Students like football players are no different as far as expectations that for many are out of their reach (those w/learning disabilities, second lang, & developmental readiness). The stakes in both are high, keep getting higher and to their detriment, but someone is making money off from students and players. The only difference is that NFL players make money themselves but are pay the price in the end.
Competition is bad in schools and also for sports players, but the exploiters in both cases don’t seem to care as long as there is money to be made.
This year I spoke with a mother who received an invitation to move from Tennessee to Alabama after a high school coach there saw video of her fifth grade son.