League of Fans' Sports Forum Ken Reed

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.

In this episode of League of Fans' Sports Forum we chat with John O'Sullivan, Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project (changingthegameproject.com), a youth sports reform initiative.  John is also the author of "Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids."  

A long-time coach and sports administrator at the youth, high school, college and professional levels, John offers great insight into the problems and challenges in the world of youth sports today and talks about some of the ways we can positively impact those issues for the benefit of our kids. 

In this episode, we chat with Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.  Michael is an expert on K-12 education and he believes in the power of physical education to improve academic performance and enhance physical, emotional and behavioral health.  His recently released book is "From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child."  

We touch on Positive Sum vs. Zero Sum in P.E.; how quality P.E. improves student attention and focus in other school subjects; and how good physical activity habits developed in the K-12 years lead to adults who prioritize lifelong physical fitness, among other topics.  

Horn believes the trend of schools dropping or deemphasizing physical education is the exact opposite of where we need to go in this country.  In fact, he believes fitness should actually be the centerpiece of K-12 school design, not just an add-on.

Our guests on this episode are Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci, the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit organization created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities across the country through the power of sport, storytelling, and community creation.

Mental health in college athletics is an important issue today.  At least five student-athletes died from suicide during the last several months of the 2021-22 school year.  A University of Michigan study found that only 10% of athletes with mental health struggles reach out for help compared to 30% of college students in general.  In addition, 63% of college student-athletes reported having had an emotional or mental health issue that negatively impacted their athletic performance in the four weeks prior to the survey.

Nathan and Taylor are former athletes at Oregon State University.  In this episode, we talk about what drove them to start Dam Worth It; the challenge of getting past the stigma that says admitting to a mental or emotional health challenge in sports is a sign of weakness; how important it is for athletes to be vulnerable; the challenge perfectionism presents for elite athletes; and how Dam Worth It has expanded beyond Oregon State and is reaching college campuses across the country.