Print volume is hurting our young athletes. Today's young athletes see their names printed more often than Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington ever did. I throw that out there for effect, but it's probably true. Nobody used to be able to google their own name. Nobody used to get ranked as an eighth grader. Nobody used to get hundreds of facebook and twitter mentions after a big game. Print was the thing of legend. Getting print was rare. It was never expected. If and when it happened, it was important. Really important. As in beating your cross town rival important. As in scoring five touchdowns important. As in breaking the state 100m dash record important. It took an actual athletic feat to be recognized. That's no longer the case. We create athletic feats out of the ordinary. The more we acknowledge the ordinary, the more print the ordinary gets, the more the ordinary becomes the entitled. The entitled were an elite class of athlete in previous eras; entitlement is the ordinary today. Excessive print creates entitlement of the masses.
The main actors in Print Volume Disorder (PVD) are: the players, the parents and the media. The players have PVD. They google themselves. They constantly check for new facebook and twitter followers or mentions. They follow and/or friend anyone and everyone that likes them; they unfollow and unfriend anyone that criticizes them. The parents have PVD. They do the same thing their children do. They seek out any and all mentions of their child and re-re-re them all. Proud to a fault, the PVD parents are. The media doesn't have PVD, it gives PVD. (Although an argument could be made that the media likes seeing their name in print as much or more than the players do.) The media is the infector and, subsequently, the benefactor. Quite the gig if you can get it. The funny thing is, I don't begrudge them a bit. They're running a business. Their business plan is simple. Most players and parents have PVD --- cha-ching! It's that simple. The more names we print, the more hits we get, the more times we're read. I don't blame them a bit. That would be like blaming the liquor store for the alcoholic.
Rankings are the cocaine of the PVD generation. We rank players as early as 8th grade. We re-rank players 6-7 times per year; gotta feed the need. Gotta get that bump. We rank 150 players deep in each class. So a player that is ranked as an eighth grader will likely see their name in this one location thirty to thirty-five times in a career. What if they play two sports? What if they visit other sites with similar rankings? What if they read their mentions on twitter? How many times will their parents, friends, girl/boy-friends, coaches, etc. show them their updated rankings? It's mind numbing to think about. How many times has Tyus Jones' name been printed in Minnesota the last 5 years? Would you take the over or under on 1 million?
How will PVD affect the players moving forward? Is it going to be possible to raise an athlete that isn't an egotistical a--hole? Is it their fault? Who's fault is it? Is their even a fault to be assigned?
PVD is a problem. It is not healthy for individuals, teams, communities and future generations. Unfortunately, PVD is growing stronger every day. It is infecting more and more people. This is a problem that will only get worse as our world continues to shrink under the veil of wirelessness. Parents will soon be hashtagging their childrens names during games. Twitter handles will be printed on jerseys in the place of last names (The NBA isn't really helping the cause with that stupid nickname idea). The media will tweet about what that stud 8th grader from Duluth is eating for lunch today (and people will care). The players will find a way to automatically retweet anything and everything that includes their name. It is only going to grow. Rankings can and will go younger and deeper. We aren't even close to the saturation level. I mean, is there a saturation level? Can a person grow conscious enough to tire of seeing their name in print? Is that even human?
That may be the saddest reality, and ultimately, the truest reality. We all have PVD. And, there is no cure.
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