If the hardship stops, you should be worried.

I played one year of tackle football in 8th grade for the LA County Sheriff’s PeeWee Cardinals. I weighed less than 100 pounds but played Tight End, Punter and occasionally lined up at wide-out. I caught two touchdowns in the first game and not another one all season because I wasn’t used to getting hit after the catch. I contracted the “dropsies” but I had so much fun it was ridiculous and if only I had chosen football over basketball…

I think it was on that team that I learned for the first time that when a coach stops chastising you, he’s given up on you. There’s a saying in ancient literature that goes, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.” Raise your hand if you like discipline. That’s what I thought. But on that football team, they yelled and cursed a little bit. If you fought a teammate, they made you line up head-to-head in what we called the bull cage and hit each other until the desire to fight was out of your system. Discipline is probably the thing missing most from sports today and consequently there is very little sonship between coach and player. Even at the high school level I’ve heard stories of boys subbing themselves into the game against the coach’s wishes. The coach allows it. At the NCAA level universities pride themselves on their academic integrity but schools like USC and UCLA have even come under scrutiny for impropriety in the recruiting process. The professionals epitomize the lack of discipline what with the MLB’s frequent but tardy discoveries of banned substance abuse and the regular headlining of NFL players like Plaxico Burress who toted a loaded hand-gun into a night club and is now the subject of pending criminal proceedings.

I can still see the spit spewing from the mouth of dissatisfied coaches who cared enough to pull you aside and explain tactic. There were rules, game day attire, consequences and the threat of dismissal. To say that the discipline was always equitable would be false however. The elites were treated differently, even in 8th grade. And that’s how primadonnas are born. Where there is no consistent and immediate discipline for all members of a team, there can be no sonship, no sense of reverence for authority. From amateur to professional, institutions like the AAU, NCAA, NBA, etc…have not forgotten but neglected one thing – DISCIPLINE. It is not a core ingredient fundamental to how athletes are developed into citizens. There is no sonship. The heads of governing bodies in athletics and coaches must understand that discipline begins at the lower levels when inner-city kids are smoking/selling marijuana at age 12 and younger and/or engaging in promiscuous behavior all the while wearing free basketball shoes given to them by a corporate sponsor. If you play/work/coach alongside a primadonna, odds are that they’ve managed to avoid hardship. There are diva/egotists in the housing projects of Los Angeles as well as Pacific Palisades. From the hood to the house on the hill, the ancient truth holds: “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons…” and it finishes, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.