Malcolm Gladwell & Dr. Michael Gervais on the State of Youth Sports and More

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Make sure you subscribe to both our YouTube channel and our RSS
feed for all future conversations here at You think.
When we dreamed up this whole idea of You think and Doctor
Gervais and I have had many conversations on air.
He's been a host, he's been a guest.
I've been on his. We had one guest from the
beginning that I said to have this conversation who has shaped
a lot of my sleepless nights andhas shaped a lot of the way I

(00:22):
view youth sports and parenting and and development, all the
things we're going to dive into.The white whale guest here at
You Think from day one has always been Malcolm Gladwell.
So for you to be here with us today along with Doctor Gervais
and I is an absolute honor. So thank you.
Oh no, I'm delighted to be here.I've I told you before, I've
I've read every book, I've listened to every one of your

(00:44):
pods, I've listened to every episode you've ever done.
Maybe no more popular voice on exploring.
I mean, from your working outliers and just so many iconic
landmark productions and landmark kind of pieces to
really frame the conversation wewant to have today.
So I'm going to start at the highest level.
I'd love to know both of your kind of views.

(01:05):
Doctor Gervais. We've had countless hours
discussing this on and off the record.
But just 30,000 foot view Martian framing, right?
Someone lands here and they say describe the landscape of youth
sports in America today. Michael, you want to go first?
Yeah. That was really good.

(01:26):
You know, I'll take a first passout of it.
I think if if Martians landed and they saw what we are putting
our kids through, they'd think that we were off our rocker.
They wouldn't. I don't think they'd understand
why the odds of going from, let's just stick with the NFL
right now. From high school to the NFL is
.02% and the way I like to frameyou sports is high stress, low

(01:51):
stakes because most people are never going to get to this end
thing. So it is it's meant to be a
mechanism to learn more about who you are and to, you know,
develop all the character valuesand some of the mental skills,
you know, for life. Except we hyper focus.
And I think the aliens would seethis.
What you say one thing, but you do another parents and the odds

(02:11):
are really, you know, astronomically out of whack.
Like what is this really about? And I think quickly they'd go,
oh, this is about parents livingthrough their kids.
That's what we do here. That's how this works on the
planet. Yeah, we live through our kids.
So that's what I think the easy framing would be.
I think the other thing they would say, so I'm coming from

(02:32):
this from the perspective I'm a runner and they would say why
are so few people running competitively and in high school
or middle school, by which I mean, if you look, as you know,
Rd. races in for adults, mass participation.

(02:54):
Thousands of people we constructin a lovely way have constructed
an area of competition that is open to the very good and open
to the mediocre. We don't make a distinction,
right? You don't not shamed for coming
in last in a road race. In fact, I was just at one on
the weekend. Some guy, older guy came in well
behind everybody else. We all cheered him because we

(03:14):
thought good for you, right? That's something beautiful, but
in youth sports, it's weird. Like I once wrote something
about why aren't cross country? Why don't cross country teams
have 40 kids on them? And why don't why?
Why isn't the scoring system onethrough 40 as opposed to your
top three finishers are your scores in?

(03:34):
And it was. Why aren't we deliberately
trying to create that same mass participation ethos for kids as
opposed to right now with this weird thing where like 11 year
old runners are in a way crazier, more competitive
environment than adult runners are in?
It's so true. It's completely backwards,
right? That is interesting.
It's very interesting. It should be so that of getting

(03:57):
of creating a space. I, I learned this when I was, I
was a, you know, very competitive high school runner.
Eventually quit. I got burned out.
I think quit rediscovered running in my 50s when I was no
longer national caliber. I was now, you know, on the high
end of mediocre, maybe on the low end of reasonably good.

(04:20):
But I was relieved of the burdenof winning any race.
And it I suddenly realized this is really fun, right?
I was denied the fun. It wasn't fun when I was 14.
It was it was high pressure, as you say, high pressure, low,
high stress. High stress, low six.
Yeah. You know, what's interesting
about running is that in high school, so my son is 17 and he's

(04:42):
in high school and there's a place for runners, but they tend
to be a little different than the other stick and ball sports,
right? Just a little different.
Track and field is more aligned with some of the more stick and
ball sports. But running, it's kind of like,
oh, they just go away for a while and then they come back
and they say it's great. But I don't think many people

(05:02):
know what that runner's high feels like or or that that the
euphoric feeling. So it's funny you guys bring up
tracks. So I did a little track back and
field in high school, but now I have.
So I have an older son who playsthe traditional 3 American
sports. He plays baseball, basketball
and football. Every season moves to the next 1
like your stereotypical Americanyoung athlete.

(05:24):
And then I have twin 12 year oldtwins and what boy girl?
My daughter just got introduced to track and field this past
winter. She's got a great track and
field coach at our school. Just kind of came out to
practice, was not allowed to compete in the events and the
and I promise when I get to the point it's it was such an eye
opening experience for me because here I am since the boys

(05:44):
were very little. And it's like, it's the most
important 8 year old baseball game ever.
It's the most important nine year old baseball game ever.
And if you're not making this team and we've and we were
watching it and we're guilty of it ourselves.
And we got to check ourselves and say, OK, what are we doing?
And then I would find myself with my daughter saying, you
don't ever have to worry about going to a competition.
Just keep practicing. You go to practice four days a

(06:06):
week with your coach. Did you learn during the
hurdles? Did you learn how to high jump?
Did you learn how to throw the shot put?
Who cares how fast you run? Who cares?
We're not going to know. We're not going to get a time on
you because you're too young to compete in the meet.
Then Fast forward to this springand summer.
She was allowed to go to a couple meets as a 6th grader.
We signed her up and my conversations in the car with

(06:26):
her, very different than mine with the boys and Doctor Giovino
is. I'm very honest about my role in
all this. Is the best part of these
conversations he's really honestwith what I'm.
Saying to my daughter, you're not racing against the other
girls. You're not throwing the shot put
against the other girls. What was your last time?
The last time you ran beat your time?

(06:46):
You could run a faster time and come in a worse place.
You could win an event and the next week run a faster time and
come in 10th. That's a great event.
But we don't say that to the boys because there's one winner
and there's one loser, right? And so like, I'm in this weird
place where like, to your point,a sport like track creates that

(07:07):
environment where it's easy to have that approach.
We've created a landscape in a, in a, in a plat, in a situation
in society with football and basketball and baseball, the
more traditional teams that can ball where we don't have that
luxury. It's did you win or lose?
Did you get a hit or did you getout?
The sport so much dictates, evenjust in my own household.

(07:28):
So like now lay that out across the whole country.
I think it's very interesting that you brought up running and
just the nature of each sport has its own identity.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's owned the word that
sociologist uses. So no affordances is my favorite
words. No one never uses it outside of
academic articles, but like an affordance is the set of

(07:50):
particularly of of character of characteristic uses or yeah,
running it's very. Interesting.
So how would you, if you were coaching a child, you know,
whether it's a, let's call it 8th grade, so there's somewhere
around, you know, the beginning of teenagers, how would you
start framing if it was in running or track and field, how

(08:12):
would you start? Framing Well, I have this
discussion all the time with my best friend's daughter and son
'cause I was trying to get them to run cross country.
It failed, but I was trying to explain to them what training
is. Most running, if you're a
distance runner, is done really slowly by design.

(08:32):
That's the best way to train, soslow that you should have a
conversation with the person you're running with.
Most running by design, especially if you live in the
countryside, is on a somewhere that's physically beautiful,
right on a trail on a, you know,somewhere.
And like by design, you can't train.
We're not going to ask you to train more than an hour or so a

(08:54):
day, can't you? You will physically break down.
So like I've described a time limited, largely unphysically
stressful, socially and aesthetically pleasant activity.
That's what it is. And if you want to keep doing it
at that level for the rest of your life, you can.
And you're a winner if you do. And if you're one of the 5% and

(09:18):
you discover along the way that wait a second, I could go a lot
faster. Great.
At what? So you would you would start
with like all of the benefits ofmovement, social, physical,
physiological, environmental. So you'd start with all those,
and then at what point would youstart leaning in and pressing
into like, oh, OK, you got something there and you know it?

(09:40):
Would depend. I used to go running with my
dad, who's a very good runner. When I was, I started running
with him, when I running with him when I was maybe 11 or 12.
And I remember the feeling, the pleasure that came when he
picked up the pace. And I realized even then that

(10:01):
not everyone had that pleasure associated with this kind of
exertion. And he realized it as well.
And I would simply watch a childand see whether they had that
kind of does pleasure come from taking it to, you know, and it's
going to be what, 10% of kids or5% of kids going to have that

(10:21):
particular pleasure? No.
Question again, I always apply it to like my boots on the
ground. I don't obviously understand
these concepts at the level thatyou guys do.
I just experience. I just know them through my own
experiences, both thinking I'm doing it right and oftentimes
knowing I'm doing it wrong. There's like a practical
component to all this, right? Like, OK, and in theory, this
all, I sit here, we all sit hereand say this makes a lot of

(10:42):
sense. OK, but how do we now with the
with the society we're living inand the cultural impact that
these kids are having and the faces and the phones and the
social media, there's a feedbackelement to like a that rewards
what society values versus maybewhat innately these kids value,
right. So I see it with my own kids.
It's hard to convince someone, even though it's in their best

(11:03):
interest to go run. It's visually aesthetically
pleasing, it's rewarding, it's healthy, it's safe, it's very
time, it's not time consuming. There's so many qualities.
But in today's society, do we reward those activities?
Are they held in a cultural significance that encourages
kids to go out for the cross country team?
So like, that's what I see on the ground.

(11:25):
Getting kids to do what's in their best interest at 12 and 13
is very challenging because whatwe know and what we try to
implement as saying this is in your best interest is not what
society is rewarding. It's not what their Instagram
page is rewarding. It's not the kid they're seeing
hit home runs and the kids they're seeing, they're fighting
that. Right.
So I, I guess my question to youguys is how much of, of these

(11:50):
kids experiences are in our control as parents and how much
are we really at the mercy of a society and a culture that we
all don't have a ton of control over?
We're just trying to hold on to the reins as they navigate their
own paths. How as parents slash coaches do
we try to continue to steer our kids towards certain activities,

(12:12):
certain approaches? You know, the, the theory that
we that the concept we always try to give our kids is like
winning is the, is the byproductof our actions, right?
Like how you train, how you perform your routines, your
habits, the winning will take care of itself.
You know, the old Bill Walsh book, but it's very hard to
convince a kid of that in the society, in this, in the society
and the, and the culture that they're living in.

(12:34):
How, as parents, do we combat that?
I grew up in non traditional stick and ball sports so I want
to answer this in two different.Ways non traditional stick and
ball. Action sports.
So action adventure. Sport surfing, Skateboarding.
Motocross, Are you a California?Yeah, are.
You a Southern California. I sense disdain, right?

(12:58):
No, no, no, a little. Not just get into that.
Not just no, not just no. Not disdain.
A little glimmer of insight, yes.
That's fun. It's starting to make sense.
This episode of You Think is brought to you by Players
Health, a company that believes youth athletes deserve the
safest and the most accessible environments possible to play

(13:19):
the sports they love. To break this down, I spoke with
Tyree Burks, Players Health's founder and CEO, to hear the
mission and principles of Players Health first hand.
We have a really special guest, the founder of Players Health,
Terry Burks. Terry, thanks for joining us
here on You Think. I'd love to just hear a little
bit about your background, a little bit about starting and

(13:40):
founding of Players Health and really just why you saw a hole
in the youth sports kind of world that you thought needed to
be filled and and it is being filled by your work with your
team at players health my. Background and where I grew up,
the environment that I grew up in played a huge part of me
creating players health. I grew up in the South side of
Chicago. Sports truly saved my life.

(14:00):
And when I say that like I had an opportunity to choose to pass
either, it was the streets of sports.
And fortunately enough, I chose sports.
I was invited to come out to a youth football practice.
I showed up early and I stayed late and it kept me out of the
streets. And so there's been two things
that I've been obsessed with. You know, the past, call it 15
years of my call it professionalcareer.

(14:22):
As I've been, I've been focused on safety and I've been focused
on sports. Like I've just been obsessed
with those things. I know what it feels like to
grow up in an environment with safety as a luxury and sports
was a safe place for me through that experience.
I had all these injuries growingup.
I had I got 3 bulging discs in my neck.
I end up tearing my hamstrings, broken fingers, ligaments, you

(14:44):
know, just playing sports and and playing football.
We didn't have athletic trainersgrowing up with the school I
went to. And then until I went to the
college level, I really didn't understand solid season
protocols around how these things were managed.
And so when I look back over my career, I end up playing in the
Canadian Football League for a couple years and I decided to
hang it up. I started to reflect on my

(15:04):
career and go, hey, how these injuries would have been made.
There's a lot better when I was younger, Like who knows what
would have happened, but maybe Iwould have played a lot longer.
And so I started to look at the impact that I wanted to make in,
in my life and, and, and also inthe world.
And sports was such a he played a huge role in my life.
So I wanted to give back to it and players, something was, was

(15:25):
my way of going about doing that.
And so our mission, it's been the same mission since day one,
which is how do we create the safest environment for an
athlete to play the sport that they love.
I think this is something that the world needs for our youth.
And so we've been focused on leaning into creating those safe
spaces. Here you think we want to bring
value to you, the parents, coaches, the athletes listening

(15:45):
in everything that we do. Check out Players Health today
and let them know Youth Inc sentyou.
Now back to the episode. So I'm going to pull that thread
a little bit further and give you my framing first and then
maybe answer it in a way where research would suggest.
So my experience growing up in sport is that if you didn't have

(16:06):
the tools, so think about surfing now, just make it
dramatic for big wave surfing. If you didn't have the technical
tools, the physical tools and the mental tools, if you didn't
have those in place and you put yourself in a situation where
the waves were big, they were just beyond your your zone of
comfort and it was more business, if you will then fun.

(16:29):
You get hurt or there was a chance that you could get hurt.
And if you didn't get hurt, you would instantly know, Oh, this
is dangerous. I just got held under for like,
call it 15 seconds, which is a long time to be tumbling
underwater. And then you, you come up
gasping for air and you pop yourhead up and you got another one
coming on your head. So if you didn't have the tools,

(16:51):
you could find yourself in a, a difficult, challenging, near
dangerous position. So that what why do I set that
up is because from the inside out, this internal drive was I
better get my mind, my mental skills, right, my technical
skills and my physical skills. If I want to go get better, if I
want to go do the thing that seems like is interesting or

(17:14):
challenging or that everyone else is doing, it didn't matter.
But I knew that I had to build my skills, crosswalk that to
modern day sport right now, that's more stick and ball kind
of traditional. Is that it it?
It is more about winning and skills are important, but mental
skills are not. So it's almost a left behind

(17:37):
narrative that happens in fleeting moments like things
like, hey, make sure you're focused out there.
Well, focus is actually a skill that you can develop and teach.
Hey, be confident out there. This is the coach or the parent
speaking. You.
The mechanics of confidence are relatively simple and you can
teach them. So it's a throwaway comment.
The mental part in traditional, traditional stick and ball

(18:00):
sports, whereas it's a forced function in action sports
growing up, meaning if you don'thave it, you can find yourself
in trouble. So you better go get it.
You got to figure it out. Yeah.
So that's one of the ways I think about the narrative around
young sport, you know, that we're interesting.
The I, well, I was just going tosay a couple of random things.

(18:21):
One is that one of the reasons why parental expectations are as
problematic as they are. You've already given given us
some of the reasons. But I always think about this
with my respect to my wife, who is it's I.
This is key. This is also true of my older

(18:42):
brother, But I'll, I'll stick with my wife for a moment who is
as naturally gifted an athlete as I have ever met in my life
and has no interest whatsoever in doing any.
She's a as a runner is I mean, first of all, if you watch her
run, you're like, Oh my God. I actually think I fell in love
with her watching her run. Never seen anything so.

(19:02):
Beautiful. Just just yeah.
This Grace and and then she's sogood she she tossed off a 5
minute mile on a treadmill afternot having run in her late 30s,
after not having run for like, as far as I can tell, years.
Oh, she's got an engine too. Oh, she's she would be.

(19:22):
I think she had a shot at being World Class 0 interest.
If she was in here right now, she'd be bored with the
conversation and would be like reading a book.
So there's something painful about when we observe someone
who has potential in something and they're not, they don't
share our enthusiasm for that potential.
And that's. He just summed me up in after 10

(19:45):
minutes. With, with, that's what's going
on with parents. With you and your Yeah, I was
going to say that was. Me and my kids, I don't even
mean as a dad, I just mean in myexperience in youth sports, what
you just said, if I could put iton AT shirt and wear it is is me
my frustration lies in. I always say, if I if my boys
were sitting here right now, I'dsay what's the, what's the
saddest thing in the world? And they would roll their eyes

(20:07):
and they'd go wasted potential, right, wrong or indifferent.
Is that the wrong pressure? I don't know the, I don't know
the impacts of that. It's just the only way my brain
works. If we're going to be, we're
going to do something, we're going to be good at it.
I don't, I'm not good at participation.
I'm just, I know it. I'm not.

(20:27):
Do I probably lay that out on myown kids?
Yes. Do I lay it out on the kids of
the teams that I coach? Yes.
And I'm the first to raise my hand and to say yes.
I don't know any other way than saying if we're going to spend
all of this time and we're not going to go on vacations, we're
not going to go and you guys sayyou want to do it, let's do it.
And you are so capable of being great and you say you want to be

(20:51):
great, but I'm not seeing step 1234 in the process.
I always tell the boys that. Again, I I've coached my boys
longer. My daughter's just gotten into
more competitive sports. She was a little bit later in
the in the process. And I always say to them, I said
you could go 3 for three in yourbaseball game, but Monday

(21:13):
through Friday, you didn't put the work in.
You got lucky, you could go over3 and Monday through Friday you
worked your ass off and you weredoing your workouts and you were
doing your routine and you were doing your product.
You know your progressions and all these little batting
sequences that the kids do to like train different techniques
and bat path and all this that they do and you could go over

(21:33):
three. I'd be happier with the second
situation. You guys tie your success so
much to the outcome that you ignore all the steps leading up
to it. And you might find if you put in
poor outcomes, you might find success.
I almost don't want you to find success because every time you
find success, but you know in your heart you didn't work hard

(21:54):
that week, you are reinforcing and a disconnect between the
work and the outcome. I want you every time you don't
put in a good week of work to fail in my brain because at 12
years old, I don't want you to connect.
I can do it anyway because you can't.
It doesn't work. That's just the way I process.
Like I don't want them to get confused.

(22:15):
The outcome is not indicative ofthe work put in.
And to watch people not put the work in that they're capable and
then get frustrated with the outcomes drives me up the wall.
So that phrase you just met in Pat said in passing.
That sums up my entire approach to everything.
And it's a struggle in youth sports because not every kid is

(22:37):
going to be as passionate as youare at 40.
Well. Yeah, of course.
Yeah, I you. So when it would be easy to kind
of, I don't know, think all right, Greg, like, man, back it
down a little. You're so intense.
Like, are your kids sure that they want it as much as you do?
Like it'd be easy. But when you explain it that
way, drawing a link between process performance and then

(23:00):
outcome that that's like this recipe that would serve whether
it's in writing or, you know, relationship making or whatever,
it would be just about anything.So that linkage underneath is
really cool. And I will say I'll bring this
forward is that I was a good little soccer player.
OK. And it came very, very easy.

(23:21):
And I'll give you a I'll give you an anecdote to or a story to
to bring this to surface. My family, they were pretty
laissez faire in parenting. Yeah, I'll just keep it there.
Pretty laissez faire in parenting.
It wouldn't be uncommon for us to be late to the game.
And here I am a let's call it AIdon't know, probably in fourth
or fifth grade. This is early days in sport for

(23:43):
me and I was late. The coach knew the signal when
they're already playing the gamewhen Mike is coming to the
field, one of the kids had to leave and I would just run on.
So they wanted to win. And even though that I broke all
the rules, I, they rewarded me for being sloppy and talented.

(24:03):
Then we moved to a bigger city and we went to a bigger city and
it was a tryouts. Now I was the kid that just ran
on and another kid had to come up.
Poor kid, right? Did all the work.
This is terrible coaching. May I say parenting as well?
And and then so I tried out for the team.
I was making AB team. There's a bigger city bigger.

(24:25):
And I said, Oh no, I can't do B teams and I left the sport.
I wish my parents would have like said, wait, hold on, you've
got something natural here. But they didn't know how to do
what you know how to do, Greg. So in one way, you're giving
yourself, your kids this great service.
In another way, maybe there's too much heat.

(24:45):
There's a too much kind of intensity around it.
Not for me to say, yeah, but I didn't get what you're giving
your kids. And my life would probably
pretty different if I stayed in stick and ball sport.
I'm very happy with my Life, OK?Why?
That's on the record. Yeah, I'm very happy.
I wonder, you know, there's another piece of this that I

(25:05):
think would be worth talking about, which is this.
The second mistake we make as parents is our assumption that
what we're looking for is a trait as opposed to a skill.
By by which I mean is you were so hinting at this earlier,
Michael, but like this connection between hard work and

(25:30):
the outcome that you were talking about, Greg, we assume
that it's either there and or not.
And if it's not there, we have to like, as opposed to saying
maybe this is something that emerges slowly.
I know lots of people who didn'tmake that connection in other
parts of their life until they were in their 30s.
I didn't. I didn't work very hard in my

(25:52):
20s. You did.
Not at writing or. I I spent the latter, the early
part of my 30s essentially goofing off at The Washington
Post, sitting in an office in New York watching MTV and trying
to do as little work as possible.
I now work harder than I work harder at 61 than I did at 31.
Way harder. It just took me a long time to

(26:12):
figure out because it was this connection between what I
wanted. And I wonder with kids, too,
where maybe we're just rushing them on this, that like there's
a moment I use running an example, there's a moment as a
runner when you really begin to enjoy the connection between the
preparation and the outcome. And part of what's pleasurable
about like a nice long Saturday morning run is you're thinking,

(26:35):
you're already thinking in advance what that's going to
mean when I want to do somethingwith it, right?
That I didn't have that when I was 14.
I got that when I was 50. I'm looking at it through the
frame of a 40 year old who's only.
Professional athlete. Professional athlete.
For my entire life, all I've ever known is trying to play at
a high level and peak performance and it's all so I've
almost been trained. And again, this started for me.

(26:56):
I was the son of a high school football coach who was hard,
disciplined, traditional old school high school football.
Legendary high school we won a. Million games, one of the most
in northern New Jersey, right outside of in Wayne, NJ, right
outside the top, right down Route 3 and public high school
won a million games. Traditional high school, what

(27:17):
you would think of the high school football in the 80s,
nineties, 2000s, that was my dad.
That was our program and it worked.
And that's where I learned all of my habits, all of my grind.
Our summer vacations for us weregoing to football camps and
sleeping on the floors of the dorm like it's all I ever knew.
But I also sometimes have to check myself and say, OK, these
kids don't have 40 years of the experience in life, life

(27:39):
experiences of high achievement and what, they're 12?
So do you, Greg, to just check your orientation, Can I ask you
some questions? Yeah, just to better understand
if there's a a fundamental orientation to work from and
fundamentals, a big word for me,either I'm approaching success
or I'm avoiding failure. And so in one of those two would

(28:03):
reveal a lot of somebody's psychology.
So if you if you, let's just do you and you'll see how this
would easily bleed into your kids that I'm terrified of
blowing it. Go, go.
When you were on the field, I work my ass off.
I work. I was in film.
I was doing everything I did my mental image, I did all of my
work so that when Sunday came, Iwouldn't blow it.

(28:24):
Or was it more like, no, I got something and there's a lot of
good here and I want to maximizethis because it is so much fun
to play and to play freely. Very different orientations,
very different psychological constructs that.
And when I say psychological constructs, what a construct
does is it allows the effervescent little, small

(28:45):
little conversations we have with ourselves kind of filter
into something that has some weight over time.
So when you played, which one were you?
And then how are you doing? I would imagine you're doing it
similar with your kids, not dissimilar, but can you just
open that up? My, my confidence, everything
about me was routine in preparation.
I all of my insecurities, all ofmy fears, all of my I don't want

(29:08):
to drop the ball. I want to make like all of that
just the natural athletic fears of failure that were in all of
our brains. The only way I knew how to deal
with them was I was so routine oriented and I knew from Monday
to Sunday morning at 1:00 if I did Monday's routine, Tuesday

(29:29):
all the way through when that ball was kicked off on Sunday,
there was nothing more that I could have done.
I did my entire routine, all my habits, from physical body work
to catching to my practice habits to my workouts to
everything. And which one was it too?
Because you were trying to make sure you were to avoid my
confidence. Came through my preparation.
No, this isn't about confidence.This is about like a fundamental

(29:52):
orientation. I just don't want to blow the
chance I have. I'm going to maximize.
I wanted to win the game for theteam.
So it was. It was more of.
I didn't fear dropping the ball.I didn't want to drop the ball.
I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
You know, for the most part, I got a rush out of saying if I do
everything in my power to prepare for this week's game, I
have the ability to go on the field and alter the outcome in

(30:13):
favor of my team. That was a rush that I really
enjoyed. 111 little double clickhere the fear of letting dad
down and disappointing dad or the approach like again, this is
awesome. I love it.
I actually have some physical skills on you see how far I can
go. Early days, probably both.
And then if you asked me as a 16year old kid, what do you hope

(30:35):
to accomplish? By the time I got out of high
school, my answer without a shadow of a doubt would not have
been earn a scholarship, would not have been go to the
University of Miami. It would have been none of that.
It would have been I got to win my dad A state championship
because we lost the last five. There's no doubt in my mind that
fueled a lot of what I did. I will say though, no one ever

(30:57):
had to beg me or force me to go do the work.
For as hard as my dad coached us, as hard as my dad coached
us, he never had to over coach my interest in the work.
You've got a lot of your dad's DNA.
Yeah. And I've tried to take some of
it and do it a little different and I've tried to do it a little
differently because it's 40 years later, you know what I

(31:19):
mean? But that's that's the struggle
that I have. It's like I want everyone to
care as and, and to your point, I'll give you a great anecdote
story about trying to separate outcome from execution and just
doing the best of our ability and the outcomes not always
going to go our way. So we're at our baseball game.

(31:40):
I was telling you guys about Cooperstown Critical moment
semifinals, million people watching extra innings.
You're not allowed to slide headfirst at home plate.
So we have one of our kids. He hits a lead off double and
extras. We're thrilled.
He steals third base. Long story short, he goes home,
he to the game, tie game. He's the go ahead run in the top

(32:02):
of the extra inning and what does he do?
He to the moment. We've been sliding into home
plate head first for four years.What does he do?
Slides in home plate, he's out. The winning run, he's out.
He's devastated that everyone's,you know, we go on to win the
game. So everything was easy.

(32:23):
This is verbatim what I said in front of the kids and the
families. This to me, sums up what I hope
I'm not always doing this, but in my mind, this is what I'm
hoping to get across. I called him out by name.
I said you slid head first. We talked all week about not
sliding head first. Did anyone yell at you?
No, I said, were you upset? Emotional.

(32:44):
Rightfully so. You thought in your mind, you
cost the team the game. You hit a lead off double.
You dove in head first in the second base and beat the throw.
You're covered in dirt. It's the 8th inning.
We're exhausted. We've been here a week.
In a really critical moment, youfell back on a habit just
playing hard. If we lost the game because you
slid head first, I have no problem with it because you were

(33:06):
going full speed letting it downthe line.
You weren't thinking about I can't slide, I can.
You were just saying I got to get home because my team needs
me and you broke the rule. Who cares?
The outcome was not as importantas you.
Just let it all on the line. You didn't fail us and if we
lost the game, I would have toldyou the exact same thing.

(33:27):
I hope that's what our players. I wanted to let it loose and do
it right. I don't like when you know how
to do it and you do it repeatedly wrong and get bad
results and get frustrated and get disappointed.
And I look at you and I say, we'll try doing it.
And I always say if you fail once, try doing what your coach
told you the first time. Like if you know, I mean like,

(33:48):
try doing it our way and maybe you won't fail like but he
didn't. That is what I want the mantra
of like my entire approach to belet it RIP, let it go.
And if the outcomes not what youwant, it's not going to be for
the lack of effort. That's all.
Remember when John Thompson hugsthe the guy?
Who was he do did he throw the ball out of bound?

(34:10):
No. Yeah.
Do you remember that? No, I don't.
Yeah. It's incredible moment where did
they lose the was in the end of C AA's was.
In the March Madness. Tournament.
March Madness tournament. They might have lost the game.
Georgetown. Georgetown John Thompson's the
coach. Just remember this ginormous.
He was like 6. Stop talking basketball.
Yeah. He's the head.
He was a legendary. Legendary, of course.

(34:31):
Yeah. One of his starters makes with
the game online, like, incredibly stupid turnover or
something. It really boneheaded.
And, you know, the entire country is watching.
And the kid comes to the side, like, completely dejected.
And John Thompson gives him a hug.
It's. I mean, it's like, it was an
amazing moment. Yeah.

(34:51):
It's that it was like just he was understanding that, that at
a moment of vulnerability, a, heunderstood the moment of
vulnerability for the kids, but also he was the kid had been
playing hard, was one of his best players, was not someone
who there's no, there's no utility in, in, in policing the
action in that moment. Well, you know what I love about

(35:12):
that story? I've got one from Coach Carroll
in the Seattle Seahawks I want to share.
But that story, why that's so radical is because Coach
Thompson could lose his job because that's how, how could
you coach a kid that's going to do that?
We've had it with you. We didn't.
You can see the board of directors or whoever those folks
are. And we all have those people

(35:35):
that have, I don't know, the purse string or some sort of
thing around us. Maybe not everybody, but most
people do. So there's this thing, there's
two things that take place in that moment is that we fall to
actually, I want to ask you about fall to the level versus
rise to the occasion. I want to come back to that.
But in this case, I believe he fell to his first principle,

(35:56):
which is a relationship based human centered.
I see this kid, I know this kid.I don't care that there's 16,000
and another million watching 16 in person.
I'm going to go over and take care of them.
The outcome of what might happento me for looking like I'm a
poor coach and I'm I'm allowing these mistakes to happen.
None of that. His first principle must have

(36:18):
been research or I'm sorry, relationship based.
Coach Carroll did something verysimilar.
It was it was a playoff game. We had a kicker and the other it
was a Cardinals, I think had a kicker and both kickers missed.
Oh no, no, we weren't playing that this team.
But it just so happened that both coaches had a moment in

(36:38):
media to talk about the kicker. And Steven Hauska was our
kicker, and he said about Steven, who missed, who missed a
game winner or game loser, I guess in that case he says, you
know what you Coach Carroll said, you hit some, you miss
some. That's our guy.
We're betting on him. We love him.
Something verbatim the other coach had said.

(37:00):
That's what he's paid to do. I'm not sure how much longer
he's going to be here. So you should have made the
kick, Coach Carroll said. We love this guy like you're
going to make some miss some what where do you want to be in
that equation? I think if for a parent to to
really settle into are you relationship based or are you
outcome based? Are you process and performance

(37:21):
focused or are you outcome focused?
Right. And I think many of us, I think
us is too big of a word because I don't want to speak for me or
either you guys in this situation.
But many people are beholden to what others will think of them,
and they don't want to embarrassthemselves at the risk maybe of

(37:42):
taking care of another, which isa pretty twisted and complicated
thing. It's funny, we're talking about
coaches now, and coaches are such an incredibly important
part of this equation. Especially in youth.
Particularly in youth sports, they're, they're surrogate
parents who are simultaneously who are under enormous pressure

(38:07):
and in some cases unproductive pressure from the parents who
they're standing in for, right? That's this kind of sorting out.
I mean, a lot of times they're, excuse me, they are not, they're
acting against their own instincts with kids 'cause they
know the consequences of not playing somebody or like the,

(38:28):
the, my, the, the idea that's been floated by some people of
banning parents from use force is one that I always come back
to. I kind of like.
It in in my son's club volleyball they are no longer
allowing parents to coach their kids.
We have some policy, we have some groups back home schools

(38:48):
and stuff that implement that. It's too complicated for the
kid, is their position. It is complicated, yeah.
And let's talk more about coaching.
I, I had it a little, but since we're on it, let's stay on it
because I think it's a fascinating because it's kind of
the double hat that I'm currently wearing and the hat,
that double hat of my upbringing, right?
One of my favorite books you ever wrote, talking to
strangers. You talk about like cognitive

(39:09):
bias and how we have a hard timereading the other side because
of our own inherent biases and our own perspectives and our own
life experiences. And it often time leads to
misinterpretation. We misread each other.
We get off on the wrong foot. And then obviously in your book,
you dive into some like really incredible storytelling and what
not giving great examples of that in just in applying it to

(39:34):
to youth sports and youth coaching.
Like we all have our biases, right?
Like we all gravitate towards certain kids that might remind
you of yourself or the kid that brings the attitude.
Like how, how do we a identify? We talked so much about
identifying and developing talent of athletes at a young
age. How do we identify and develop
talent in coaching? And then secondly, what are the

(39:56):
challenges of coaches? What are their biases?
How do we make coaches aware of their biases?
Like there is a human element toall of this, that while we all
think coaches need to be perfectand they need to make sure they
have every single kid figured out how to coach them, how to
push their buttons, it's unrealistic at the pro level,
let alone the guy volunteering at a 10 year old soccer game.
So like how do we evaluate the landscape like currently going

(40:21):
on in the youth? World of that question, yeah.
I was, I did a, an interview with, I did this show last year
with Kenya Barris and we interviewed Brené Brown.
And you know, she talks a lot about shame and the role is
shame plays. And she was talking about her
experience as a swimmer. I think it was a swimmer in as a

(40:41):
kid and how her coach used kind of guilt and shame against her.
And that was the moment when shebegan to think about those ideas
a lot. That's showed up so much in her
work. And I I had a kind of slight
quarrel with her because she presents these experiences with
shame as if they are near universals.
And I said to her, you know, I don't, I said, I don't, I don't,

(41:05):
I don't think of myself as someone who's strongly oriented
or motivated or experience shame.
And she's like, oh, well, you'reprobably in denial.
Or I was like, well, you know, Ihad a coach for years when I was
a kid. You never used those strategies.
I had, I had one of those men she coaches, right.
My point was like, I think she had such a kind of toxic

(41:25):
experience with her coach and she came to understand that
that's what coaching was. I don't think she had a model of
someone who presented a really healthy like my track coach.
All my struggles with running asa kid were self-inflicted.
They were all in spite of it, not because of my coach.
My coach was, I realized now as an adult what a magnificent

(41:50):
person he was. Special.
Is it easier to reflect on the impact your coach has on you in
in retrospect than it is in the moment?
This is a crucial point. This is a crucial point.
I think he's doing his best coaching for me now, 30 years
later. In other words, he died years
ago. That's interesting, but I only
now do I understand what he was telling.
Me so OK, so stage. Goes back to, I was saying,

(42:11):
because it goes back to this question of time again.
We're always in such a hurry to kind of process the meaning of
these relationships and things. What if it does take 30 years?
You know what I remember there was a study of, of look, people
were looking at, at, at, at the quality of teachers and their

(42:32):
effective teaching on, on schoolperformance.
And there's a famous study that was done at the Air Force
Academy, which showed that in a particular teachers class, the
kids were doing way worse than their peers and equivalent
classes. And everyone was like, oh,
that's a bad teacher. Then they looked further over
time and they realized those same kids two and three years
later were doing way better. In other words, the they just

(42:55):
didn't understand what this teacher was he he was doing or
she was doing something complicated and really high
level that they couldn't grasp in the moment, but they grasped
upon reflection later on. That's a version of what was
going on with my they're playingthe long game running he was
they're playing the long game and we it's that lack of
appreciation for the long game. I think that is also a part of

(43:17):
this puzzle. So when you said time, I love
the twist that you just took us on because when you said time, I
was going to the, my son's coachspends during the week probably
a little bit more time than I get to spend three days a week,
2 1/2 hours. Like it's, it's club, club is
intense. That's a lot of time.
And I get like an hour at night where he's like, you know,

(43:40):
fitting in homework and whatever.
So like the amount of time that coaches get early on with the
kids is remarkable. And what they're doing is that
they are shaping A philosophy for improvement.
And there's two camps, structured learning and guided
discovery. Guided discovery, This is the

(44:01):
long game. So I'll give you an example.
I think you and I have talked about this a bunch, which is
let's say your kid is 6 years old, five years old, whatever,
and you want to teach them how to roll.
Most parents or coaches in in certainly in the US, we'll go to
the top of the gentle hill and say, OK, I want you to tuck your
chin and I want you to put your hands out in front of you and

(44:24):
kind of put your crown of your head on the beginning of the
grass and then just flip over. And then we celebrate.
Yeah, you did it. OK, good job.
Let's do it again. So that's structural It it's
very structured. Do this, this, this, this
mechanical boom. The guided discovery approach is
the long game, which is like, OK, Malcolm Junior, you know,
like little Malcolm. What?

(44:44):
Did you have a nickname? Was it Malky or?
No, No, we should not do that then.
OK, so Malcolm. Let's not start that, man.
Let's not start that now, OK? Go ahead and roll.
And the kid might roll sideways like a log or kind of over one
shoulder, and it doesn't look like a regular roll.
That is guided discovery over time.

(45:05):
The person that was taught through guided discovery has far
more capability because they have a deeper range.
They've experienced their whole body in different ways.
They've tried things out. They've got to their comfort
zone and the edge of their comfort zone and, and shaped it
structured learning the informalinstruction bit.
You know, they will get better at the forward roll faster.

(45:27):
And those are the kids we pick because they they got it quickly
and you know, fast. We're now drafting 19 year old
kids into the NBA. That's what the most current
draft 19. So we don't have time in the US
for guided discovery, which is abase of mat for mastery as
opposed to a base formal instruction is the base for high

(45:49):
performance. Yeah, that framing to me matters
a lot there. With the book Talent code of.
Course, yeah. In essence, dives into deep
learning and they follow, you know, the guys playing football
in South America and why they become and hours and hours where
no one's actually coaching them and they're just playing and
they talk about runners and why certain geographic locate like
and it's exactly the art of deeplearning takes longer but has so

(46:11):
much more impact long term. It's a I want to get back to
coaching, but I want to stay. But that's coaching.
To me, that is coaching. It's.
More of creating environment that that's a safe space to have
the ability to go out. You were asking about what I'm
not. Great at that.
Well, what can we do to help? I'm not great at help coaches,
right? 1 is I'm just pointing to the

(46:34):
value of the coach having some basic awareness of different
frameworks. Are we approaching success or
avoiding failure? That's a framework.
Are we doing formal instruction or guided discovery, The long
game or the quick wins? That's important.
The other is that that I found to be of credible value.
So we're talking about individuals now, not systemic
and I hope we get to the systemic thoughts, but just put

(46:57):
a line of piece of a line acrossa piece of paper and think about
what are the characteristics foran above the line coach and what
are the characteristics for a below the line coach?
You've had a below the line coach.
You've definitely just share with us an above the line coach.
And if you start to get those characteristics in place, I
think quickly you say I want to be an above the line coach and

(47:20):
then so now you've got a bit of a model to work from.
Are you about those principles or characteristics or are you
more about the other stuff that's below the line?
It's a It's a nice can I? Give you guys a practical
scenario because I'd love both of your opinions on it.
Along those lines, what I see boots on the ground is in order
for me to have the timeline to have real long term impact, it's

(47:46):
obvious you have to have the ability to coach that kid for a
long time, right? To give that runway for the, for
it to pay off down the road in today's environment.
It goes back to my question earlier where I say, how do we
get our kids to have an impact when we give them great advice
or we give them pointers? They're also fighting societal
norms and they're also fighting societal pressures that combat

(48:08):
what we're trying to implement and what we at least think is in
their best interest, right or wrong.
So in order for me to coach a kid for enough years and say,
OK, I'm in this long term, stay with me, stay with me.
In today's world, that kid or family parent, whoever's making
the decisions will not give me five years to coach their kid if

(48:29):
the first season there was very limited individual or team
success. So now the pressure coaches are
finding is if I don't have some semblance of individual, if I
don't show some return in the immediate future, I'm not going
to have the luxury of developingthese guys long term.
It's when I draft, I draft someone in the NFL.
That's why the NFL is a little different than the NBA and we

(48:51):
draft proven players. Because the old saying is if you
draft the guy with a lot of upside, someone else is going to
be coaching him. He's got to be good now or I
don't get to coach him. It's the exact same thing at the
youth level. If you don't have success,
you're good players, the ones that really have the ability to
reach their ceiling and really play the long term game they're

(49:12):
going to. Leave.
So it's this weird contradictionwhere I'm in for the long haul.
I want you to be a great high school player and we're going to
start at 12. It's a six year runway till
you're a senior in high school. But if you're 12 and 13 year old
years, your family or you don't feel an immediate, the team's
not winning enough, the talent around you is not good enough,

(49:33):
You're not developing. As a result, we can't go to top
tournaments to face great competition because our team's
inferior. There's a million reasons I'm
not going to get that coach, that kid for the next 5 years.
How do I combat that? Yeah, I don't know whether.
How do I play both? I think you've got to create
systems that that that kind of enable that that that, that that

(49:56):
level of investment. Also, I wonder whether, you
know, they're this gets back to another threat of this, which is
the rules for developing elite athletes are going to be
necessarily a little bit different than Rules is the
wrong word. But the approach 1 takes to kids

(50:16):
who have potential to be a lead is going to be different from
the approach for everybody else.And too many kids are being
mistakenly put in the pre elite category, right.
And that's complicating your a lot of these parents who are
saying, I want to see results. I'm yanking the kids.
They they had they're they're deluded about their child's

(50:37):
prospects. And they should instead be
thinking about, you know, if we're playing tennis, you know,
can I create such a love of the sport that my kid would be
playing tennis when he's 70? That's what we should be like.
My coach, one of the reasons I loved him so much.
What was his name? His name was Brent McFarlane and
he, I remember I had a disaster.I was a very good middle

(51:00):
distance runner and a terrible cross country runner.
And I would quit in cross country races because I just
couldn't bear the the messiness of it.
That kind of, it's just all over.
It was just, it was just mayhem.I just like, I was like, I can't
deal with mayhem and I would quit and I remember being so
disconsolate at a Ontario championship one year and he sat

(51:21):
me down and he's like, I'm I don't care because I'm not
coaching you about right now. He made this exact argument.
He said I care about you as a runner at he coached a lot of
Battle, 25 and 20. I was 14.
He was talking about people twice my age.
He said. That's when I care about it.
That's what we're building towards.
We're not. It's not about now.

(51:42):
It was so liberating. That's very.
Yeah. That's one of the lessons I
actually did not grasp until I was.
I didn't realize how liberating that was until I started to run
against. You know, what I really
appreciate was that the sensitivity that he's passed
away and he's still coaching youas opposed to like he's actively
coaching you. It's a.
It's a. He's in my mind.

(52:02):
This is like. He said things he said to me
with a wink. He would always yell at us
during interval workouts. Strong body makes a strong mind
and like which. But he said it with a sense of
humor. It was like, we're out here and
you know, you may not be the greatest run in the world, but
you'll be a better thinker because of this.
That's what he was saying. It was so much fun.

(52:24):
I scream that at my kids, by theway.
I just scream at them. But I always think back again,
the influence of my dad, right? And here's this hard ass, tough
high school football coach and you talk about do kids really
understand it in the moment? And then how do they view it in
retrospect? In my mind, he's like the
perfect example. We I've told Doctor Gervais

(52:46):
this, this story. He had a really cool tradition
where the night before Thanksgiving, he did what he
called the father son beef steakat our high school.
We'd go after school and practice for the upcoming game,
go up in the locker room, shower, come into the school
cafeteria. And it was just the boys on the
team, 9th through 12th graders and their father, uncle,
grandfather, father figure what whoever was in their life.

(53:08):
And it was the 9th through 12th graders.
The freshman sat in the back youmade you worked your way up to
the front and everyone sat therewith their father slash father
figure. But the cool twist on it was all
alumni from my dad's first year in 1986.
And the event still goes on without him.
But his last year of coaching was 2013.
So I was a senior in 2002. So for since 86 to 2002, these

(53:31):
guys would come back the night before Thanksgiving and it was
guys that were freshmen in college and it was guys that
were 40 with teenage children and they'd bring their sons.
And the cool thing was the alumni could stand up and they
would go in order of age, like what year you graduated?
So there were guys from the first year that my dad ever
coached in the mid 80s all the way to guys that were one year

(53:51):
out of high school. They were home for freshman
Thanksgiving holiday break. And they would get up and they
would speak to the current players and the current parents,
the fathers and I bet you, and when they would tell stories,
they'd make fun of my dad. They, you know, whatever.
But the point of it all was in the moment.
There were times where we hated it.

(54:13):
We hated him. We hated the discipline, we
hated the hard, we hated the tough.
And all of a sudden now I'm flying back here from the West
Point Academy and one of the cadets my dad coached,
unfortunately, he's passed away.Presented my dad the flag that
flew over their base in Fallujah.
And guys who graduated from Ivy League schools, guys coming home

(54:34):
from California, bringing their sons out of college now to make
it a night to come sit in a highschool cafeteria at a public
school in New Jersey to share about their high school
experience. Like, if you would have asked
them to get up and speak to the room as a junior in high school,
I bet you it would have been very different.
There were probably nights they went home.
And he's an asshole. He never tells me anything that
I do is good. And then all of a sudden it was

(54:56):
like, Oh my God, he shaped my entire life.
I just didn't know it that that's like the last thing image
that I have in my brain, like ofmy own existence.
I want to transition a little bit.
Doctor Ray, you touched on it inpassing earlier, but I want to
dive a little bit deeper. You talked about how we had this
idea, especially here in Americaof we try to identify elite

(55:19):
players and put them on a different trajectory.
And it's getting earlier and earlier and earlier.
And I'm seeing this like in realtime boots on the ground,
obviously outliers, a landmark publication that really dove
into like fast tracking. Of course, the famous story that
you provide in the book of the Canadian hockey players and the
realization of their birthdays. And it's the bigger, stronger,

(55:41):
faster athletes get access to the best coaching, the best
training. And all of a sudden you look
down the road and did those kidsmake it because they were the
biggest 12 year olds or because they were the best 12 year olds?
And, and, and the conversation of reclassing and now kids doing
8th grade twice, like it is a real conversation.
I'm not saying all of it was inspired by outliers, but it's

(56:04):
at the core of it. There's not a family that has a
kid playing sports that does notknow the work of outliers, does
not know the work of relative age, does not know the work of
all of it. That is a landmark work produced
by, by you. So I want to, I want to dive
into that a little bit now. Obviously your research and what
came from it and the and the response to the book was

(56:27):
tremendous. Now there's a practical element
of where people are now applyingwhat they learned and what they
understood from your findings. And it's happening over and over
in real life. The systems we create are geared
towards the best young kids are often the biggest young kids,
the most physically advanced young kids.

(56:47):
And it's something I have to remind my kids because they look
at me and they say, dad, why arewe not the Big 12 year old
walking out of the baseball tournament hitting 300 foot home
runs? And Johnny's dad is 5/9 and he's
6/1 and he's on every All Star team.
He's the star. He's getting selected to all
tournament team. And we fight that.
And I have to say, this is not arace to 12.

(57:08):
It's not a race to 14. Let's see where everybody is
when they're 17. Like let's let's just hang in
there and fight and fight. But that's what these kids are
facing. That is real.
That is a stress that I see in my own household.
How do we combat that? You can do, I mean there's
really fun things you can do in individual sports.

(57:29):
The Australians take this problem really seriously and
they've done this thing in swimming where this pilot
program where you can assess a kids physical age, biological
age, maturity age, maturity level very efficiently and
effectively from a limited series of proxies.

(57:52):
So I can say you are your calendar age is 12 years and six
months. Your physical age is 11 months
and 11 years. And a months developmental
spectrum. Developmentally, you are 11, but
you are. Physically and mentally.
Which I want physical. Here, this is all physical.
Physical, whereas your your chronological age is your 12.

(58:15):
So in some in these some of these races, what they do is
they have two outcomes. They have the outcome of who
came first and through, you know, 7th in the 100th
freestyle. And then they do a second thing,
which is they they adjust the times according to your level of
physical maturity. And so, and what handicap?
Yeah, they're doing handicap. They're golf handicap.

(58:35):
They're doing handicapping and what you discover then is that
the kid who comes in last could actually be the using the
handicap, the first place finisher.
The other way to do it is in other sports.
You can't do it in it's so well and team sports is can have kids
graduate to their the next age class level on their birthday so

(58:56):
that everyone has a term during the year where they're the
youngest, where they're in the middle and where they're the
relatively oldest, right. So it's just staggered so you
have the fluidity. So instead of having a system
where a group of kids are permanently in the eldest group,
you have everyone because you want kids.
Ideally, everyone should go through the experience of being

(59:17):
the littlest on the field because you actually learn a lot
of stuff being a little something.
It's David and Goliath. David and Goliath, yeah, and
then you should also have that could be a whole have a term.
It's the biggest because you getamazing boost of confidence if
you're the. Biggest And so in the NFL, we
would often ask in the draft selection birth order and we
really liked the second and third in a family, right.

(59:41):
So if you had two older brothersor an older brother, because
there's a scrappiness that that they would build that the first
order might or the first born might not have.
So to your point that you'd wantthem younger and in you sport,
there is forever a conversation in the US, at least in you
sport, certainly in the club level and volleyball.
Oh. Johnny's, he's young.

(01:00:03):
Is he? He's going to stay back another
year. Is he going to like, there's
always this like, yeah, but he'syoung or yeah, but he's old for
his age group. Yeah.
So that's cool that they're doing it actually.
I remember talking to a running coach who had a very successful
college program who loved to go to out of the way schools and he
would look at the he had a girlscross track team was a great.

(01:00:27):
He would look at the shoes they were wearing.
It's like big paws. If you're wearing like shoes
that you got at Walmart and you're in the same age as
everybody else and you're like, you didn't, you weren't held
back here or you were. You're like, oh, I want you
because you're undeveloped. Like it's the, it's the Canadian
golfer corollary. Yeah, you want to recruit

(01:00:49):
Canadian golfers because they can only play 6 months a year.
So imagine if they go to Florida, they can play 12 months
a year. Their upside is huge, right?
That's kind of. Yeah, I had.
I had a coach in Florida, a baseball coach in Florida, one
of the Florida University's big program tell me they don't
recruit Florida pitchers. It's the complete opposite of
what you're saying. They've done too much.
They're maxed out. They pitched 12 months a year

(01:01:10):
their entire life when we get them.
Shoulders or. Shoulders, there's a physical
deterioration component and there's also just a there's
nothing left. They've been pitching their
whole lives 12 months a year there.
There's very little we can do tohelp them, but I want to stay.
I want to get you guys both opinions on this, though.
In a related kind of idea, when I was growing up, the really

(01:01:31):
good kids, whether that was justbecause you were bigger than
everyone or you were just one ofthe rare kids that it just came
easier to even if it wasn't a physical size element, you were.
It was clear when you watched him on a basketball corridor, a
football field, that kids different.
That kid would move up. He would always everything was
about making you play. The handicap was you're 12, but

(01:01:54):
we put you with 14 year olds because that was more relative.
Now all of a sudden you're in the middle of the road and now
you're actually not just King Kong, right?
We are in the exact opposite society right now.
And I'd be curious, like, was there a tipping point to this?
Was there a moment in time? Like what has changed the
psychology where now the really good kids actually play down?

(01:02:20):
What is that about? Is it because as parents and as
adults, we love to see our kids be the best?
There's like an ego element because we know it's not in
their best developmental, it's not in their best interest
developmentally. You should play at the highest
level you can survive it's. Like Conor Mcdavid's dead, but
why do we lying about his son's age to get him to play higher?
Yeah, So why? Why in America?

(01:02:41):
And this wasn't always the case.When I was growing up, it was
the opposite. Everyone was like, it was like a
badge of honor to say my kids playing up a grade and he's not
the best player, but he's, you know, he's only in 7th grade and
he's. When my I'm do the opposite.
Same things happening academic. When I was a kid, you
accelerate. I was accelerated as a kid in
school. Today I'm I'm there's, there's

(01:03:03):
much less of it, but I would many, many.
By the time I got to college, I realized how many kids in those
in that era were a year or even I was two years younger than my
class, and that was not uncommon.
What? How old were you when you
graduated high school? 16.
Yeah, there you. Go We had five years of high
school in Canada, so we got one year delayed from.
So, So what? What is the psychology behind

(01:03:25):
that? Is it, Is it a?
Is it a? It's a time, it goes back to the
time thing. It's the it's wanting to see the
results of the intervention right away as opposed to
trusting that the outcome of like I when I was in high
school, I did, I did high schoolone year or less than everybody
else. The short term results of that
were a little awkward. I was two years behind my

(01:03:46):
cohort. I was socially way out of, you
know, I didn't go to my prom. I didn't like, I mean, it was
weird. But then by the time I was, you
know, in college and I was like,oh, this is so good.
You know I got out of. Would you do it again if you
could go back in time totally? Totally, but my parents had to
trust that the longer term out outcome here of having Malcolm

(01:04:11):
being in a challenging environment design surrounded by
people who would push in places was more important than the
temporary dislocation of being, you know, I, I was, I, I hadn't
even hit puberty. And everyone else, they were
there was a girl in my 7th gradeclass who had a kid and I hadn't
had puberty yet. That's that's what was going on

(01:04:33):
in my high school. Yeah.
That's that's interesting. I think there's two parts to
this. This one is I can hear the
narrative like why are we, what's the race?
Why are we pushing so hard? Why are we taking the 14 year
old and bumping them up, You know, to play with the fifteens?
Like, what's the rush? Let them be kids.
I can hear that in a very healthy way.
And I can also hear exactly whatyou said, which is, you know,

(01:04:58):
let's let's let's put Malcolm ina situation where he's
challenged properly. So I think there's a
thoughtfulness that is required by parents to really know their
kid. And I, I'm sitting on both sides
of those. I want my son to be challenged.
And I also, I'm enjoying and trying to create as much of A a

(01:05:19):
ring fence around his, his childness, his youthness that I
possibly can. He's 17, and so he's coming
right to the age where it's likeone more year left with him, you
know, so. What's does he what what, what
sports does he do? Yeah, volleyball is his his
primary sport. He's not going to play in
college. He's, he could, he could come

(01:05:39):
off the bench at AD 3 or probably start or come off the
bench in D2, but probably start at D3.
But he's, he's an only child. So he loves the social aspect of
it and he's good. He's a good little athlete, you
know, and so, but he doesn't have the drive to want to go
further. He's doing it for a lot of other
reasons, which I'm like, very cool.

(01:06:00):
I think it's very, very cool. You know a question I get asked,
but and I don't pretend I give my answer.
I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but it's a it's very
similar to the conversation in in your example you gave of
yourself. I get a lot of parents that ask
me all the time like how do we find the right team?
What is the right team for my son or daughter?
What is the right level? The simplest way I've tried to

(01:06:22):
frame it that again, you guys correct me if you don't think
this is the right approach. I don't ever believe we should
put the kids in an environment where they are the worst player.
I think that brings all sorts ofpressures and failure and
especially at the young level. But I also don't think the kid,
your kid should ever drive to bethe best player by far on the
team either. So I was with you'll appreciate.

(01:06:44):
So the way I think about this ispractice and play time.
So how much time like high speedpractice, there's a value in
that. And if you're if you're kind of
under qualified and you're getting high speed practice,
it's great. It can be really good.
But at some point, your kid wants to play and so and there's

(01:07:04):
something. You can't, right?
That's the the carrot at the. End and there's something you
can't quite translate from high speed practice to game speed,
right? So there's unique things that
happen in games that are difficult to manufacture and
practice. I was speaking with Steve Kerr,
this was just three days ago, and we're talking about the
young, young kids going into thedraft, the 19 year olds.

(01:07:25):
And he said, you know, and I think he mentioned Georgetown as
well. I think he, I can't remember
the, the coach. He said, you know what I'm
concerned about? They didn't go through a three
or four year NCAA program where they were beating up on the less
talented kids. So we want to take the ones that
are the cream of the crop in NCAA in college.

(01:07:46):
And they're not going through that hardening, confident
building experience where they are far better than everybody
else and they're dunking on AB and C and like they are men
amongst boys. So that's a really interesting
take. I would.
I would approach it completely different.
Yeah, I, I, I love the idea thathe's suggesting that.
Meanwhile, the best. Player on his team though, is

(01:08:07):
the complete opposite of that path.
The the joy and whatever. No, Steph Curry, right?
Like what hardened Steph Curry was he was the complete opposite
of what? Meaning.
But he came through a gauntlet in college.
It was really hard. He did not beat up on the other
kids. So maybe, yeah, right, but maybe
I'm misinterpreting. Is is Steve Kerr suggesting that
the the guys they're targeting to add to their team?

(01:08:29):
He wants them to be the overly dominant where they had nothing
but success for four years in high college.
There was 2 camps. 1 is the gauntlet of NC.
NCAA is a value whether you are the one that is dominating or
not. There's a value first and
foremost. And if you are the one that is
dominating, you're going to comeinto the league feeling a

(01:08:49):
certain way about yourself. So you got a chip on your
shoulder and you've learnt some stuff or you've had.
Lots of kids that have only everright the LeBron James of the
world to me are the unicorns. There's very few of those Tiger
Woods. There's very few kids that we
always say, oh, it's not about who's the best 12 year old.
For LeBron James, it stood the test of time.
He was been. He's been the best player at

(01:09:10):
12182040. That's very rare.
I think there's a callousness built up where the kids who
experience nothing but success from the time they can remember
and have very little failure, very little adversity, very all
of a sudden for most people outside of the elite of the

(01:09:33):
elite, that day is coming. I personally think you want your
kid to experience it as early aspossible.
I always joke like I want my kidto have his first really
horrible experience in sports orgirlfriend or school, whatever,
and he still comes home to cry to mom on the couch at our
house. I don't want him to be 24.

(01:09:55):
I don't want him to be failures coming, struggles coming.
I worry sometimes about the kid who has only been the best
player on the best team and beentold he's the best player in the
best team since he was 15. And all of a sudden he comes to
me in the pros. I saw it in our locker room.
You saw it in the locker room inSeattle all the time.
They were the five star recruit.They were the best player in

(01:10:16):
their neighborhood. No one ever was better than you.
They went to Alabama, Ohio State, USC, Creme de la Creme, 5
star first round draft pick. And I'd say, well, you're going
to throw. It's a quarterback.
You're going to have a day whereyou throw 4 picks.
You've probably never thrown 4 picks in your life.
What what? I don't know how you're going to
react because I've never seen you deal with it.

(01:10:37):
That's my struggle of the kid who's always now, if it's LeBron
James, he just continues to be the best forever.
You can't bank on it. I like the Steph Curry's of the
world. I want a kid to.
I know. I know what failure looks like
because he's lived it. Well, I think, I think, you
know, in listening to this conversation, I would just say

(01:10:58):
that what we're really doing in a roundabout way is arguing for
an understanding of the, the, the, the inevitable and
fundamental heterogeneity of kids.
That there isn't going to be 11 particular model that works for
all the kids. And, and it's going to differ by

(01:11:21):
domain, by sport, by. And what you want is a, a coach
and a system that's flexible enough and, and thoughtful
enough to appreciate the differences in the kids coming
in. You know, that's, I think that's
the, you know, what I went, whatI did in high school is not
something that most good should do.

(01:11:42):
But for me, I was in a country high school, I was, I had a lot
of self-confidence. I had incredibly supportive
parents. It's fine.
I wouldn't recommend it to everybody.
The research is there's a bit ofresearch that's really
compelling, which is for high school boys in the bottom third
of high school sport, it's really hard on their

(01:12:03):
self-confidence because they're picked last and they're picked
last in front of everybody. So just think about the
playground for a minute and remember the old way that we
would line up like there'd be two captains and then who's on
and you select your team. And inevitably, if there's 12
kids lined up, there's three or four that are picked last.
And it's really, really, really,really hard on those kids.

(01:12:23):
Great coaches, if there's a coach there, can frame the whole
thing differently. They can take care of the one
that maybe doesn't have the Bigfoot, but has, you know, a
clever something else and can maybe make them captain.
So great coaches understand their people in a in a in a very
sophisticated way. And that takes some time and

(01:12:43):
some thoughtfulness to do so. And in the race to, you know, a
19 year old draft pick, it's really hard to spend that amount
of time. And let's go back to your
question, which is how do I picka team?
But practice and and play time is an important one, but it's
also the people and the process that they're going to develop

(01:13:05):
your son or daughter through. And if the club doesn't have a
clear philosophy, it makes it much harder to have some sort of
predictability about what's going to take place in that
club. The best, the better clubs,
they're owned by humans. These are not like the
government doesn't own clubs, right?
They're owned by usually, you know, one or two or maybe four

(01:13:26):
or five families that pulled their money together 20 years
ago or two years ago. And if they have got a system
and a philosophy and approach where they train their coaches
in the blank, fill in the blank,I'm sorry, X club way, whatever
the the club name is, then you've got some sense of what
you're going to get. But if you've got a club and

(01:13:47):
it's left to the individual coaches to sort it out, it's a
little bit of a flip of a coin. Yeah.
And and a bit of a a bit of a transition, but related to the
idea of coaching and some of theconflict that these coaches are
dealing with. Some of the as much as some of
the coaches are dealing with therepercussions and some of the
pressures from the families, thecoaches are also creating a lot

(01:14:07):
of distress for the families andthe kids as well.
For example, back home by us, there's a lot of coaches that
put a tremendous amount of pressure on families that if I'm
your basketball coach, you can'tplay baseball, you're not
allowed to play football becausesummer we're going to be at AAU
tournament. You can't be missing for summer
football. You can't be missing for a golf
tournament. There are it is the more the

(01:14:28):
norm than ever now for youth coaches, travel ball coaches,
high school coaches to come out and say if you want to play for
me and have a chance to play on my team, you cannot play any
other sport and give any other time to anything other than what
I'm doing it. And the advice that I always try
to give, especially the high school kids at our school,

(01:14:51):
sports specialization is critical and not all of it, but
a lot of it's driven by coaches,not necessarily in the school,
but like travel ball peripheral coaches.
And the advice that I always tryto give, and I'd be curious if
you guys think what what your guys thoughts are here is I
always say that if there's a coach that tells you you can
only play their sport, they're not telling you that because

(01:15:12):
it's in your best interest. They're telling you that because
it's in their own best interest.So to your point about like are
above the line, below the line. Are you serving the kids or are
you serving yourself? I think there's no greater
injustice to these kids than these coaches making 12 and 13
year old kids pick their future,pick their sport before they've
even hit puberty, before we evenknow how tall they're going to

(01:15:32):
be, before we even know what they like, right?
So the idea of sampling versus specialization to me is probably
at the top of the youth sports conversation in America.
I'm curious curious your thoughts.
Yeah, that's, but that's that idea of delaying are are these
kind of confining decisions as long as possible is a a very and

(01:15:58):
a useful kind of because of course then we repeat the very
same false lessons we learn on the playing field we repeat in
life. So the, the kid who learns that
you got to figure out whether you're a football player or a
baseball player by the age of 11is also the one who's coming out
of college and is incredibly stressed about finding what role
they, you know, as opposed to appreciating that they have you

(01:16:22):
really, you really do have your whole life to figure out what
you want to do like you really do.
And you can the the cost of switching careers in midlife are
not what you think they are likeit.
Lots of people do that all the time, very happily And you know,
or understanding that some careers maybe you do them for 10
years and then it's fine. It's refreshing to hear you say
that. I, I didn't know what I was

(01:16:43):
going to do even coming out of college.
So I had and I was OK with it. You know, like that was part of
the that. Was your Southern California you
had you had parents who didn't show up on time.
You were you were well prepared for that.
Was hardened by that, yeah. But yeah, awesome.
That's interesting. But no, I mean, it's something
the the pressures of kids nowadays to stay alive in

(01:17:06):
multiple sports is getting harder and harder and younger
and younger. And I think it's a travesty.
I want to really shift gears nowto something I think is super
important. And the most recent book I read
of yours, Malcolm, was Revenge of the Tipping Point.
And you talk about how college admissions uses sport to shape
groupings. You talk about your one third

(01:17:26):
rule, the rule of 1/3. And I just found all that very
fascinating. And I think it's especially
relevant to today's world. There is a ton of stress on
parents about what the future holds of their kids getting into
college. And I think a lot of the, of
the, the rush the time element that you guys have both brought

(01:17:48):
up about why we need to figure out what our kid is good at is
because sports seems like the easiest Ave. unless your kid is
a brilliant thinker, a brilliantmind, it seems like the easiest
path to open that window a little bit wider and those doors
a little bit wider to get your kid into college.
It feels very daunting to say mykids just get in, get into

(01:18:11):
college because of his SAT scores and his grade point
average. Like I think that's a huge
motivating factor for these families to invest in what
they're investing in sports rushthe process like they are.
They don't have till 25. They got till 16.
And if you buy 16, your college opportunities will be very clear
in regards to what your skill level is in sport.

(01:18:33):
I want to dive into a little bitof that.
Like, what can we do to both recognize that that's real?
Colleges do use sports to fill and fit different groups, both
racially, economically, gender, all that, you know, different
demographics, but also not make it like paralyzing where it
feels like it's the only way to get your kid into school.

(01:18:55):
So what would you say to parentsSo take out which sports, I know
every sport brings a different thing.
Just frame how parents should approach as their kids are
getting into like approaching high school and now they got
this four year stress of like I got to get my kid to college.
I almost feel like parents nowadays.
It's almost like check the box, you succeeded, you sent your kid

(01:19:16):
off to college, you did your job, nice job.
Right, wrong or indifferent. That's what it feels like to me,
that because of the value society puts on, like that stage
in life. You think that that's happening
now? I do right, wrong or different
I? Think it's actually more the
type there's a more to that, which is like congratulations,
you sent your kid to a top 25 school or top ten school.

(01:19:39):
I think that like just going to school feels like it's not.
Not just getting into college, but going to the college flag
that you hang in June when your kid graduates.
Like there's a. It's almost like a competition
element. It's wild, yeah.
Amy, that's just what I view on the outside.
Obviously I've never sent. To parents is clearly using it
as a feather in their cap in their conversation.
The alien conversation So what should we?

(01:20:00):
So what should we tell families?What would be your advice to
navigate from 8th grade to 11th grade, that window where it's
like, all right, we got four years to figure out what
colleges what, how do we use sport correctly as an Ave., as a
tool to give you opportunities may be greater than your

(01:20:20):
academic being. I think it's amazing that
there's kids playing. My older brother went to the
University of Virginia, played football on a full athletic
scholarship at the University ofVirginia.
He was a good student. By no means was he going to the
University of Virginia at the time they were a top two public
institution along with like Cal and stuff.
But he got a degree from the university, one of the top
public universities in America, never played a down of

(01:20:42):
professional football, but he has a degree from a really
prestigious only because he played football and was a good
player. I think that's great.
I think there's thousands of kids that share that story that
this opened up doors that otherwise never would have been
open to them. They're at Community College
throughout the local state school.
When done right, it can be an amazing engine of opportunity.

(01:21:07):
But they're abusing it to your point.
So like how would you frame it to people to do it correctly?
Well, I know here's what I hope I tell my daughters when they
come of age, which is the only thing I'm going to insist on, is
that you engage in some kind of physical activity because that's
an important part of what it means to be a healthy person.

(01:21:27):
I don't care what it is. I don't think it should be a
means to an end. You're not going to be a
professional athlete unless you know you have a better chance of
being struck by lightning. If you are, Hallelujah.
Probably not. So probably don't, don't and try
and do something that you can doyour whole life.
And if they can find something that fits those criteria and it

(01:21:50):
helps them get into college, so much the better.
But I don't. I don't want to pursue any
strategy, deliberately choose a strategy that breaks any of
those rules. And I'm going to play devil's
advocate. Maybe, probably this is fair to
all of us. I'll just use myself as an
example. Before you I'm looking at that
red thing that was blinking red for a long time and now the card

(01:22:11):
says full. Ignore that.
OK, I want to make sure. So we're good.
We're recording. The goal?
What's our What's? Our what's our what time is your
out time? If we could wrap up soonish, I
got to get back up. Yeah, yeah.
Totally. Where's?
Where's home base? Upper East Side.
But I got. Yeah, I got.
Sorry I get lost in these. Conversations I got, kids I got
to deal with, Yeah. Yeah.
No, let me just, I'm going to play devil's advocate.

(01:22:34):
I'm going to sit here and say, well, it's easy for you guys to
say you're not worried about paying for college.
Your kids are going to be able to afford college.
Like, I'm a single mother in South Miami.
My only opportunity to get my kid to go to the University of
Miami might be athletics. Yeah, might be so like.
I'm not sure that that's accurate.

(01:22:55):
I'm not saying it's true I'm just saying this would be the
counter argument. So I guess it's easy for us to
say like I just want my kid to find something they like and if
they do it in college great. But for some people, like sports
is the pathway. But that mother and her son are
not the people who are abusing the system right now.
The system is being abused at the other end, at the other

(01:23:15):
income end. That's and that and that that's
what's poisoning the whale. She's if to to to talk more
about this hypothetical mother. I'm guessing she's not the one
who's screaming at the coach at and she's not the one who's
spent $85,000 on a private trainer and you know, so I, I

(01:23:37):
don't have a problem with her. No, neither do I, I.
Think and maybe she legitimatelybelieves that like I met this
guy recently had Nigerian good Nigerian guy played in the NFL
loveliest guy in the world parents, you know, off the boat
from Nigeria. He didn't that's not the game
they were playing like she's youknow, he just you probably know

(01:23:58):
this guy. I think he played.
What was his name? Can't remember complicated
Nigerian name. There's a.
Lot of like, there's a lot of Africans now playing in the NFL
like it's become, I mean. A big players, but yeah, no,
she's not. I don't.
I think it's important that we understand that there are
multiple parties participate in the system and they are not all

(01:24:18):
equally culpable in its corruption.
And I think it's so I totally take your point about that woman
and her son, but they're not what we're focused on here.
We're focused on the people who are, who are screwing up
something beautiful in the name of an end.
That's not good. And what are they exactly
screwing up? I know you got into it in the
book and whatnot. Like they're, they're screwing

(01:24:39):
up proportions. They're like what exactly?
The people at the other end thatare abusing tennis and rowing,
Like what actually? What is the outcome?
On they're corrupting meritocratic institutions and
they are more than that, though,they are ruining something
beautiful that is sport for their kids.
They're they're denying their kids a a decent shot at a

(01:25:00):
pleasurable experience at something that is enormously,
you know this. We all have this table.
We're all here because we believe there's something
incredibly beautiful about organized physical activity.
Let me add 22 elements to this because I'm I'm going to double
down, triple down on everything you said.
And in California, just as a, asa Ave. of interest to folks that

(01:25:21):
are living in California. If your son or daughter goes,
doesn't have the package to get into the top school that they
were wanting to and you choose to go, if you choose to go
junior college route, 2 years out of junior college with I
think it's a 3.3 or 3.4 GPA guaranteed into UCLAUSCUC,

(01:25:43):
Irvine, probably Berkeley, there's a handful of schools
that you're guaranteed to get into.
That's a different route. Now, that's not that we're
taking sport out of the mix because likely you're not going
to go to JUCO, play JUCO, and then find yourself for two years
at USC playing football or basketball because that's not
how that works. But there are other paths into
universities that are quite remarkable.

(01:26:05):
I, I just from parents that havekids in high school, the stress
of the college admissions process right now, I never went
through it. We were recruited athletes.
I get we could go to Notre Dame and go to it didn't matter.
So I never lived it. The anticipation of what that's
going to be like in a couple years for my kids just based off
the conversations with parents around town that we know with

(01:26:27):
high school age kids, it's a real sense of stress.
It's a it's a significant sense of stress.
How do I get my kid into a reasonably good university and
college? It's not that easy.
Just for reference points, if wewere to throw a horseshoe in a
crowd of non stick and ball adventure sport athletes, 7 out

(01:26:47):
of 10 likely didn't graduate high school.
So just a frame of reference that's, you know, we are seeing
it through stick and ball sport,rowing.
And you know, maybe there's a stick in that one.
But the idea that there's this whole other pool that when
they're talented, they don't even go to high school, they
don't finish high school. Which is a whole other

(01:27:08):
conversation for a later day, guys.
I mean, to have this conversation, Malcolm, like I
said, from day one, you were theguest that we discussed your
perspective, your study, your research, the time and effort
you have put into really changing the way a lot of people
view so many of the topics We just covered, our landmark

(01:27:28):
publications, landmarks, studies.
For you to be sitting here at this table along with Doctor
Gervais and I, who we, you've hosted me, I've hosted you,
we've Co hosted, we've been guests to put it together.
This is an absolute treat. It's an honor on behalf of you
think and our entire mission to just empower and improve the
world of youth sports and give these families a little bit of

(01:27:50):
help and a little bit of hope. Your voice, your presence here.
I can't stress enough just how much we value it and how
appreciative we are. And all I can say is thank you
to both of you for joining me here on You Think.
Thank you, Greg. It's really a lot of fun.
Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.
Thank you.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Malcolm Gladwell & Dr. Michael Gervais on the State of Youth Sports and More

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

All Episodes

Malcolm Gladwell & Dr. Michael Gervais on the State of Youth Sports and More

Dateline NBC