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I just watched a series on Curiosity Stream called Fourth and Forever. It’s about football. But the story applies to any sport. It’s about parental pressure and delusion. It’s also about wanting to get out of Long Beach.

Long Beach Poly is a Southern California athletic powerhouse. It’s big sport is football. It’s often the high school with the most players in the NFL. All the football parents and kids expect for their kid is a CIF championship ring and a D1 scholarship. 

Long Beach has a lot of ghetto. A majority of it is a dangerous place. Players talk about a football scholarship being their way out of Long Beach. They should be thinking academics. Kids with bad grades talk about college scholarships. 5’7” kids are talking about going D1. Kids who aren’t starting talk about starting and getting a scholarship. There’s a lot of delusion.  

In the season portrayed the very successful coach’s son competed for starting QB. He’s not as good as another kid. The other kid wins the job. The coach’s wife isn’t happy.

In the fourth game against another powerhouse LBP is getting spanked. The starting QB gets picked on his first throw. He fumbles away a snap in the next possession. During the week he wasn’t focused at practice. He kept telling the coach everything would be fine. 

The coach yanked the starting QB and put in his son. The son threw three interceptions. But he played the rest of the game. They lost 37-0. As a former coach I could see what the coach was doing. He was making a point to his son and wife the kid is not a starting QB. He was sending a message to his starting QB if you don’t focus you don’t play in a game they had no chance of winning anyway.

The mother of the starting QB spent most of the game and the next week screaming “nepotism” to anyone who would listen. Several parents listened. The starter earned his job back the following week. It was part of the coach’s plan. 

I looked up the coach online. After thirteen seasons, six CIF championships, sending more than 150 players D1 he quit. He was tired of the demands of the parents. He said the only thing he did wrong is not win fourteen championships in thirteen years and send every player D1.

He went to an 0-10 program. Over the next five years they had a winning record. He left when they got good and made it to the CIF semifinals. The reason for leaving? With success the parents become difficult with expectations.

What was sad was a story about a kid who stayed at a teammate’s house for three weeks and no one called to see why he never came home. He lived for two years at his friend’s house. The mother treated him like one of her own. The kid chose Air Force over Cornell due to the full ride. I looked him up online. He transferred and started at Holy Cross.  

 

** The dream is free. Work ethic sold separately. **

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