Unless I’m misunderstanding, I don’t see how this role is different than what most youth sports already have now as “commissioner” in the sense there is a president of youth (name sport here)

If you’re talking one commissioner that would rule over all the other sports presidents, I don’t think that is likely. Most sports are already a mess of this league and that league who each do their own thing and the national associations don’t have much success in standardizing anything. I’m most familiar with youth soccer, where you’ve got two presidents of different associations with teams and leagues under them playing by their own rules... and those groups fight over EVERYTHING

A very interesting discussion started by our esteemed poster RpBobcat. Talk about changes in youth sports since I played. Sometimes I think if anything there should a Commissioner of Reality in youth sports. My kids play sports and to their credit, they and most of their friends seem grounded in reality. Yet, there are way too many kids playing on travelling squads who are in the 3rd and 4th grade. One kid in our neighborhood plays on a hockey travelling squad which takes him to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Nashville on the weekends. The day after Christmas until early January he will be in Ontario and Quebec for a tournament. His dad told me that about half the kids and their parents think they surely will be getting their tickets punched to the NHL. As he put it, they aren't going to play college hockey let alone in the NHL.

Another neighbor who is hardly a jock told me that after 3 years of shelling out $2,500 a year on some sort of elite hockey camp, his son informed him he's not going to try out for the local high school team when he enters high school this fall because he's just not good enough. Way too many kids and or their parents are under the delusion that they are the next big thing. This same neighbor told me of a kid who was on the Columbus Crew futures team (apparently they have tutors but they don't go to their local school?) He decided to leave that behind and go back for his senior year of high school, because he felt like he was missing out on being a high school teenager and missing his friends, schools dances etc.

A realtor told me stories of a couple area kids moving with one of their parents to south Florida for one of those Nick Bollittieri style tennis camps. After renting and or buying an expensive condo, it didn't take long for the mom or dad to see that some of the Florida kids, let alone the Russian and Croatian kids were leaving their kid in the dust. Like I said, maybe we need a commissioner of reality.

Finally one of the local soccer academy owners told me that he recently addressed some sort of sports conference put on by Dick's Sports (in Dallas I think.) He was quizzed by the company as to why sports sales are down for kids who are high school age compared to those a few years back. He relayed to them that too many travelling leagues of every sport are burning out kids, which results in them quitting when they are teenagers. Youth sports should be local in nature and school driven, he stated. He went on to say that the elite athletes are easy to spot. My guess is that his advice to any youth commissioner would be to pare down these travelling squads to the truly elite athletes. For many kids, organizers and sports academies are simply making money off them and their parents hopes and dreams, because there will be no professional or college career that will come out of all of their hard earned money and time .

From what they were saying,there are virtually no restrictions on travel teams when it comes to games,practice, etc..

They talk about travel teams a lot on this show.

Apparently teams hold "open" tryouts at $150. or so per kid,knowing they
only need 1 or 2 players.

The coaches also talk up the players to their parents to keep them on the team,and the money coming in.

They also talk about how kids who specialize in one sport at an early age,then play year round,can burn out mentally and physically before they get to high school.

A lot of the ones who don't burn out,find that their travel team coaches inflated their abilities.Then when they find out they're not going to be the next ______(insert pro athlete's name) they quit.

If I understand you right, you're saying this discussion was concerning perhaps a federally appointed position/department to govern youth sports? It is an interesting concept. The Surgeon General can ban products scientifically proven to be harmful, perahps "Federal Commissioner" could step in and ban certain youth sports practices? I don't see how you could have this position govern actual rules and guidelines though. They could make recommendations, but as others have said, they will just create their own and not follow whatever sanctions these would be. This stuff already happens all the time.

I am the Commissioner for Worthington Coach Pitch baseball and have a blast running it. I set the rosters, schedule, rules for the league all on my own. I've talked to other Columbus area commissioners and compared rules and there are definitely some differences. In the end though, it's still baseball and the rules aren't really a huge deal.

I coach a 12U travel team and my son is on a 10U team. They each play about 30 games total including tournament games. They each do 1 out of town tourney per season just for the experience. Fees are $400 per year. We do a little in the fall, and some indoor work Jan-Mar. We have a 90 day blackout period mid-Oct thru mid-Jan. In my biased opinion, this is what travel sports should look like.

I've come across several families doing much crazier things. Playing almost exclusively tournaments...many out of town. There are PLENTY of appropriate teams in Central Ohio. I've seen fees of 2-3k, teams with 60 games, and year-round practicing with little to no wiggle room to play other sports. I don't have elite level future pro boys, just solid ballplayers...so maybe my thoughts would be different if I had a kid who was extra special and turning heads.

Need Ted Thompson to weigh in on this one, he has a lot of experience with multiple kids/sports.

This is another topic that gets a lot of air time on The Sports Edge.

The host has on a number of college coaches and people who work with
high school athletes in determining how to best move forward with
their academic/sports careers.

One of the things everyone stresses is managing expectations,especially parents'.

They point out just how low the percentage of high school athletes
going on to play any level college sports is.

The percentage gets even lower,when you look how many kids get any athletic
scholarship many.

Then,except for D1 football and basketball,the number of full athletic scholarships is minuscule.

They also talk about whether you want to "ride the bench" in a D1 program or
actually play at a lower level.

The other universal theme is that you should chose a college based on academics first.
They talked about one kid who worked so hard to get an athletic scholarship,he
and is parents never realized the college he was going to didn't offer what he
wanted to major in.

I feel that there could be almost a reversal of the trend coming within a generation. I've often thought that a fun concept for a summer baseball camp or summer league would be to have parents drop off their kids, there's equipment and snacks, but other than that, it's a free-for-all sandlot camp. Instead of having parents dictate lineups, positions, innings pitched, strategy, and everything else where they try to live through their child's experience, let them just be kids. Let them fight and argue, figure things out, have fun, get dirty, and learn the rules through each other rather than from that of a barking coach.

This problem (which nearly everybody recognizes, even those involved in club/travel teams) is driven by the parents, not the kids. These children are over-managed, over-scrutinized, and sucking some of the fun out these games.

Yes, helicopter parenting is a real societal problem these days. One small example: There's a school bus stop by our house. Every day when school isin session several parents sit in their cars to pick up their kids when they get off the bus. These poor snowflakes can't walk a few houses down the street on their own. In one case the driveway is only two away from our driveway and the kid could throw a rock from the school bus stop to his driveway.

They Don't like the limits because they are 1). convinced their child is the next Mike Trout - spoiler - they are not....not even close. or 2). they see their friends / neighbors / others they strive to rival in the community placing their son or daughter in travel ball and do so as well to keep up with the Joneses - spoiler - your friends / neighbors / others kid is not the next Mike Trout either.

2 stories - was out in driveway pitching to my son when he was young (8 or so). Neighbor kid (10 or so at the tine) came by. Had him pick up a bat. Hit the ball a ton - told him he should play some baseball. Told me his father wouldn't let him - soccer only - He (like his older brothers before him) quit soccer by 13 - no fun anymore. Coached my kids soccer team when he was U8 - everyone thought their kid was the next big thing, Had one kid that you could see was a natural - had real coordination and speed - all others were pedestrian. Most spent the next 8 years paying for travel ball - thousands a year. Natural kid played one season at UNC-Wilmington on very partial scholarship and then quit - rest of players too good. Only kid I saw better than him was Steve Smith's kid - who played a year at DePaul before giving game up as well.

Met so many parents that were convinced their kid would play (at least) college ball and paid year after year in travel ball costs to prep the kid - almost none play college and parent ends up paying way more than any scholarship covers.

Not sure how much lower it can get when children are being called snowflakes by old men.

+1

He or she also seems to be an ageist based on posting history.

[BTC, your memory is failing you; it was my wife who called for the shuttles, not me. You’ve been killing the messenger for years.]

And into the 70s on the neighborhood little league field. Very little evidence of this now.

However, I spent the weekend at a 12U baseball tournament in Warsaw, OH. The games were played on 3 fields that were part of a little community park, including a swimming pool, basketball/tennis courts, pavilion with band stage, shelter houses, etc.. Very old-school Americana. I had a nice conversation not unlike the topic on this thread with the tournament organizer and he told me that a day/night doesn't go by during the summer when the fields aren't being used by local kids for pickup games. Maybe because it's Amish country, maybe not. But what some of us did 40-60 years ago isn't entirely a thing of the past.

On a side note, the Newark team, which is made up of Rec League players, beat a travel team from East Holmes 2 times Sunday to take home the tournament championship.

No, you directly called children (I'm assuming elementary age) snowflakes. As far as parents dropping off and picking up kids at bus stops, this is not unique to Athens but occurs in a lot of school districts. I do not understand why parents are not allowed to have piece of mind that their children are safely picked up and dropped off from school. Maybe someone should inform these same parents that a man in their neighborhood leers out his window at their children.

Snowflakes seems to be a common insult among a segment of the population. Here's a recent example -

https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2019/08/ohio-lawmaker-bla...