James Harrison has delivered the most jarring hit of his career. Except this time it isn’t Tom Brady or Joe Flacco picking himself up off the turf, looking for a flag. This time he sacked the wussifiers of America.
Harrison made the single greatest use of Instagram in the history of Instagram this weekend, announcing he was taking away his boys’ participation trophies because he wanted them to earn the awards.
Liberals, and those who would rather see your sons taught “downward dog” yoga poses as opposed to football and baseball, have been dazed ever since.
Enter Erik Brady, who in USA Today took a shot at James Harrison’s “nonsense.” Brady begins with a curious statement: “Kids always know the score, even when it's not being kept.”
Brady went on: “Kids always know the fastest kid on the playground and the best players on their teams. They know the difference between winning and losing and the distance between first place and last. They do not grow up to believe they are winners in life just because they got a tin trophy for finishing fifth in rec league basketball.”
That’s not what science says (and we all know how liberals worship science!). But especially in sports kids tend to pay attention to the things adults tell them are important. Things like making sure your foot hits the bag, holding the ball with two hands, and wrapping-up when you tackle, etc ... Why would a kid care to “know the score,” if an adult doesn’t think it’s important enough to keep it?
Brady got to his true point near the end of the piece, claiming to know “lots of millennials — mostly smart, happy and well adjusted young men and women.” The problem as he sees it: “Older generations always find something to harrumph about in younger generations, true since Stone Age rock-heads. That's all this really is, a belief that things were better in a past that never was.”
Bingo. Brady’s real beef isn’t with sports or winning and losing. It’s political. His beef is with the quintessential, competitive, rugged individualist, always-striving-to-win character that defines America. Probably because, in his mind, this particular attitude has made us a bunch of meanies and oppressors who ran the Indians off the land and made us insensitive to the “little people.”
Of course, no actual “little people” exist in this country, except those that allow themselves to be little. James Harrison (who, by the way, is 37 – hardly a grouchy old fossil) didn’t allow himself to be little. He was undrafted out of Kent State and fought his way back into the league after playing in Europe, eventually becoming a Super Bowl champion.
Brady finishes his thoughts as all baby boomers must do at least once in life, with a Woody Allen quote:
“The trophies cost a few bucks for a big smile. They do not cost trauma in later life. Woody Allen famously said 80% of success is showing up.”
Yep, 80% of success is showing up. But 80% of success is still failure. Fact. 100%.
