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By Ken Kaiserman
Editor In-Chief
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SportsKids on Television
I know that
everybody is excited about the new television season and all of the new
series that are premiering, but I hope you didn’t miss some of the most
compelling moments of the year; August marked the 60th annual
Little League World Series. Not only do the kids who play exemplify the best
levels of sportsmanship, hard work, competitiveness and fundamental skill
that we always emphasize, but the games make for some great TV. This year,
in an incredibly well played game, the US team, from Columbus Georgia, edged
out the World Champions from Japan, 2-1, to capture the title.
The
Little League World Series may be the ultimate reality show displaying the
full range of human emotions in a couple of hours. If you watch any game,
you’ll notice all the things we talk about each month: pressure,
fundamentals, teamwork, community building, cooperation, coaching, and every
positive aspect of youth sports displayed continually throughout the
tournament; it really makes for great television.
While the Little
League World Series was terrific, great television is certainly an oxymoron
in our society. While many of us can’t wait each week to see the new
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Coach’s Corner, Continued
House,
Nip/Tuck, Survivor, American Idol or any of the other
popular shows that are on today, it’s certainly a long way from the TV that
most of us watched as kids.
One of the biggest issues that many parents, including parents of SportsKids,
deal with is how much and what to watch on television. While we all love our
television, what should we be watching? How about the kids? According to a
study done by RealVision, an initiative to raise awareness about
television’s impact on us, TV is turned on for 7 hours and 40 minutes in the
average US home. The TV-Turnoff Network, which sponsored the study, finds
several negative ramifications due to the impact of television include: 1)
TV harms children by hampering education; 2) promotes obesity; 3) promotes
violence; 4) promotes over consumption by each person viewing over 40,000
commercials annually; and 5) squelches political awareness.
While we can all agree that it would be good to watch less television, it is
also the choices of what we watch that cause significant concern. Before the
advent of cable television, Saturday morning was the only day when the great
cartoons were available. Sure, the family would look forward to cartoons
because they were special and only on a limited amount of time. Now, there
is Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and a myriad of other
stations showing cartoons 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
While
that’s a major problem, the flip side offers some positive news. There are
now also education programs on every minute of the day as well. The History
Channel, Discovery Channel or even Animal Planet offer unique and
entertaining programming for kids. In addition, for all of our SportsKids,
we have sports on all the time as well. In
addition
to the games and sports
news, there are
fantastic programs about the history
of
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Coach’s Corner, Continued
the
sports we love including amazing biographies on tons of sports stars. Few
stories are more inspirational than the Sports Century series found on ESPN
Classic. For any young athlete, the fact that every profiled legend,
regardless of their sport or upbringing, has some things in common: love of
the game, desire to be the best and an unending willingness to work hard.
Being a great athlete requires dedication in addition to talent.
Many of these conclusions seem self evident as we compare the kids of today
to our own childhood. When we were kids we spent most of our time outside
playing. After school, and certainly on the weekends, we ran out to play
ball and had to come home “when the street lights came on”. Cars were the
end-zones and we spent the day playing. In this generation, many kids don’t
get a chance to play out side. They’re stuck inside because there are too
many stories of child abduction. Children now have organized one-on-one
“play dates” with adult supervision. Neighborhood kids often don’t get to
just go next door to play.
Our
changing culture has created a situation where organized leagues and classes
become all important. With physical education budgets diminishing and the
inability to just play, scheduling activities is an important part of child
development especially if we want to reduce the time spent sitting in front
of the television. Because these recreational leagues are so important to
the development of our youth, it makes the volunteer coaches paramount in
the equation. We need to make every effort not only to teach proper
fundamentals but, even more importantly, to insure that every kid has fun.
It is all of our responsibility to help fight the draw of 24 hour a day
cartoons to make sports and other recreational activities a better
alternative. That is the only way we can all work together get our kids off
the couch.
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