League of Fans' Sports Forum Ken Reed

One of America's best sportswriters, Joe Posnanski, joins us for this episode. Posnanski has twice been named the best sports columnist in America by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He's also written for The Athletic and Sports Illustrated.

In this episode, we chat about his new book, "Why We Love Baseball," as well as a couple of his other books and his new Substack newsletter called Joe Blogs.

Topics covered include how baseball treats its fans, MLB's numerous rule changes this past season, whether or not a robo ump will soon be part of MLB games, is baseball losing popularity, and if so, how the sport can become more fan-friendly, the debacle that is the Oakland A's situation, the annoying number of ads on radio game broadcasts, and the greatness of Negro Leagues champion Buck O'Neil.

It is estimated that more than 5,000 fans have been injured, some seriously, by foul balls in Major League Baseball (MLB) and minor league baseball stadiums since 2012.

While significant improvements have been made at the Major League level in recent years (in terms of protective netting being installed to the end of the dugouts or down to the foul poles) fans in some minor league and college baseball parks are still unprotected, except directly behind home plate.

Our guests for this podcast are Jordan Skopp, founder of FoulBallSafety.com and Greg Wilkowski, a Chicago based attorney. Wilkowski has filed a class action lawsuit against the Peoria Chiefs, a minor league affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals in Peoria, Illinois. Chiefs management has refused to put up protective netting at their field beyond the netting directly beyond home plate. The result has been numerous fan injuries.

We discuss the historical problem of foul balls injuring fans, the "Baseball Rule" that teams have used to avoid liability, the specific case in Peoria, why some teams are still hesitant to put up protective netting, and the fact the vast majority of players are for more protective netting in stadiums.

This episode was recorded a couple days after the 108-year-old Pac-12 conference imploded, sending the world of big-time college sports into greed-based chaos.

Dr. David Ridpath, sports administration professor at Ohio University and a long-time member of The Drake Group, a college sports reform think tank, joins us on this podcast episode.

Topics include: 1) Why the Pac-12 fell apart; 2) The toothless NCAA and the lack of a sheriff with clout, which has resulted in a Wild, Wild West college sports landscape; 3) The hypocrisy of college sports administrators testifying before Congress that name, image and likeness (NIL) benefits for athletes are ruining college sports while simultaneously selling their souls in the quest for the almighty dollar in the conference realignment game; 4) The negative impact long cross country trips will have on athletes' mental health; 5) The unethical cross-subsidization of college athletic departments at universities, as well as the growing percentage of student fees directed to the athletic department; and 6) The seemingly inevitable trend towards two super conferences at the highest level of college football.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Ridpath shares several ways college sports can be fixed. While today's college sports landscape certainly can be pretty depressing, Dr. Ridpath believes there is definitely hope for better days.

Former All-American basketball player, Olympian, Rhodes Scholar and United States Congressman Tom McMillen chats with League of Fans' sports policy director Ken Reed in this episode.

The two talk about Tom's decision to delay his NBA career by accepting a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University. The discussion then turns to the state of college athletics today, given the pressures of NIL, the transfer portal, sports gambling and huge media contracts. Reed switches the topic to the poor state of physical fitness our young people are experiencing today. McMillen provides great perspective on this issue given his long involvement with the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (now called the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition).

Other topics include the "Jungle of Youth Sports," as McMillen has called them, the profit-at-all-costs nature of sports in this country; why we use taxpayer money to fund new sports palaces for wealthy owners, instead of funding programs that create broad-based sports participation in this country; the lack of a national sports commission or sports ministry in the United States; and why our National Governing Bodies (NGBs) for sports don't -- or can't -- fulfill their mandate to promote "sports for all" in America.

In this episode we talk with Mano Watsa, President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world, with over 150 camps in 30+ U.S. states and Canada.  Mano leads a unique organization dedicated to the holistic development of young people as both players and human beings.  In addition, Mano is a sought-after speaker who has inspired over 250,000 students, athletes, coaches and business leaders around the world.

Our discussion moves from why Mano decided to make basketball education his life's work, to some of the problems in youth sports today, including single sport specialization, the growing gap between the "haves" and "have-nots," the high drop-out rate in competitive sports, and the growing mental health challenges young athletes are dealing with today.  Mano describes his organization's emphasis on "attitudinal fitness" and how it creates resilience when adversity hits.

We close with a look at what makes PGC basketball camps and clinics so powerful, and how they create young leaders and team players while developing important basketball skills.  

Linda Flanagan, author of the new book "Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports and Why It Matters," joins the podcast to talk about the ways heavily commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.  Linda has written extensively about how youth sports can hijack families to the point where family outings, non-sports activities and bonding time over dinners are lost in the pursuit of the next club team game or travel tournament.  She also talks about the "why?" ... why youth sports began to transition from a positive recreational activity to a huge industry in which kids and their parents sometimes travel hundreds of miles to play 10-year-old soccer, basketball or volleyball games.

We start the episode talking about why Linda decided to write her new book, get into some of the problems and issues in Youth SportsWorld today and then talk about ways the youth sports scene can begin to change, including a couple positive examples.