On Violence, Entitlement & the perils of glorifying youth athletes

It's time to admit there's a reason why so many high-level athletes get accused of sexual and domestic assault

My father is a brilliant man, well-versed in legalese as a renowned lawyer and classically book smart, evidenced by his undergraduate and law degrees from Ivy League institutions. About four years ago, he began teaching as an adjunct professor at a local school nearby. The school, occupied (to put it bluntly) by the antithesis of Ivy League-caliber students, needed someone to come teach a construction law class as part of the requirement for majors who would graduate with a degree in Construction Management. It wasn’t a class designed for lawyers.

My father was pretty far outside his comfort zone. He struggled to relate to the students, to water down the material in a digestible way, and to change his verbiage and communication methods so they could understand him. After one of his first mid-term exams, he was sitting in the living room grading while I was visiting on my own vacation. Nearly half the class, if not more, failed the exam by his standards. No “A” was given out.

As a teacher, he sought my advice or feedback on structuring the exam, assuring me he covered the material and properly conveyed the format of the test. My feedback to him was simple: that couldn’t be if so many students failed. That if he was to say the kids failed, he needed to be certain first that he hadn’t failed them.

It’s a simple philosophy I carry with me in a lot of ways as a teacher and a coach. If I spend 0 minutes in practice for two weeks going over press break, then a team we play comes out and traps us in a diamond press the entire game and we turn it over a bunch, I’d be misguided to direct blame at the players. I failed to prepare them the right way.

Why this little anecdote?

I keep thinking about the horrid stories coming out, seemingly far too frequently, about young men in sports who are teenagers that become violent towards women. This summer, it was Arterio Morris of Texas. This week it’s Dior Johnson of Pittsburgh. Four and five-star recruits, lauded athletes as teenagers, who lash out in disgusting ways toward women. Perhaps two instances are too few to pick apart as indicative of a larger and more concerning trend. But to be frank, the idea of being impervious to consequences and the numerous examples of a lack of consequences coming to athletes involved in sexual or domestic violence feels related. And adults around these athletes have to look at what messages enable that behavior.

Youth sports have changed drastically since I was in high school and younger in the 2000s. There are published recruiting rankings for 10 year olds. High school choice is often transactional, about the outcome of what college a kid can get to and how much financial assistance a private school will give them. Recruiting events are year-round, high school teams are expected to play in Fall Leagues and Summer Leagues, offering 12-month workout schedules and programming. AAU is a status symbol more than ever, and playing throughout the spring and summer is seen as the only way to be identified by college coaches. Individual trainers help kids add their skills in a slowed-down session tailored to the kid’s needs. By the time the kid is 15 or 16, they’re encouraged to put down every sport except for the one they’re most likely to play in college.

My hypothesis is that so much of this has to do with the idea of free college access. Scholarships are life-changing from an athletic perspective, and they always have been. Look at the cost of attendance at these schools now as compared to 20 years ago and that value is only increasing. Paying to go to all these tournaments, play on these AAU teams, workout with a trainer year-round, promote yourself on Instagram and Twitter with mic’d up highlights and professional video editing… they’re seen as investments. Pay for them now and you won’t pay $40k a year or more to send your son to college. The ends justify the means.

The result of such a transactional nature for any of these kids is that the outcome starts to be all that matters. Not only does the outcome only matter, but the image of how to get there is vital in the social media era. It’s supposed to look easy. You’re supposed to look larger than life. And when that’s what matters, the kid has to perpetuate that idea: this comes easy to me because I’m me. I’m talented, I’m special, and I’m going to make it. The lessons or the skills taught, on the court or off it, aren’t valuable enough on their own anymore.

I think a lot about entitlement whenever I see the details of the situations with Arterio Morris or Dior Johnson, as disgusting as they are. Strangling women and essentially holding them captive. Speaking to them in a way that demonstrates a feeling of ownership over them. It’s appalling, especially at such a young age. When they see themselves as commodities purely for an end result, they treat others the same way, lacking respect for genuine interaction and struggling to create safe and intimate bonds with others.

This violence also learned behavior, engrained by seeing a lifestyle that many feel they must emulate, or invincibility to the one they currently have. How dare someone tell me no, don’t they know what I’m destined to do and what I’m here for?

Where do you think these kids pick up a lot of these lessons?

They see in the news college football teams and whole collegiate administrations covering up sexual assault and rape. Assistant coaches sweep sexual assault under the rug to keep kids eligible, hire strippers to entertain and have sex with recruits at parties. They see Deshaun Watson get credibly accused of sexual misconduct, have the Houston Texans try to prevent it from going public, and then the Cleveland Browns hand him the most guaranteed money in NFL history before resolution in court. Fans further glorify Watson in ways that show up on social media.

Talent earns a player a second chance to play in the NBA despite protests on their college campuses about their role in sexual assault culture. Countless NBA players have been arrested for issues with domestic violence, a pattern that seems to be increasing, and very few wind up losing professional opportunities as a result. Even Arterio Morris is still practicing and scheduled to play with the Texas Longhorns this upcoming season.

How is a teenager supposed to come to the conclusion that how they treat a young lady’s safety is more important than their athletic career if the adults around them clearly won’t do it?

I want to make one point incredibly clear: nobody but the person who commits a crime is responsible for those actions. Full stop, adult or not, violence against women is always appalling and the instigator of said violence bears the weight of what they’ve done.

Just know that it’s not a coincidence that if we as a society continue to stress the outcomes of becoming a Division I athlete, at the behest of any well-rounded nature as a person, instances like this will only become more common. Before we can say that these young men are failing to treat women the right way, we have to make sure we as adults haven’t failed them first by perpetuating a system that makes athletes feel and seem invincible.