Active students have better grades, enhanced memory, lower absenteeism and better behaviour
The physical activity levels of our young people were already trending downward when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic made things worse. Kids around were stuck at home, forced to try to learn virtually. An online math class is one thing. A physical education class at home is nearly impossible. During the pandemic, physical education has been…
Cleveland MLB franchise sees the light and adopts a new name
Cleveland Guardians. Sure it sounds weird. Cleveland’s baseball team has been called the Indians for more than a century. But everyone will get used to it. Most importantly, it was the right thing to do. Yes, the name Indians is less egregious than the blatantly racist name Redskins that Washington’s National Football League team used…
Show me the money!
Here we go again. The University of Texas and University of Oklahoma are reportedly exploring the possibility of leaving the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in search of more money and exposure for their athletic programs. The American college sports landscape has changed rapidly in the last several months. The United States…
National Football League player Carl Nassib has given the battle against homophobia in sports and society in general a huge boost
Las Vegas Raiders’ defensive lineman Carl Nassib announced he was gay last week. He’s the first active National Football League player to do so. It was a landmark announcement that will help thousands of young LGBTQ athletes and non-athletes alike. It’s a milestone that has – and will continue to – garner a lot of…
Humanistic coaches focus on encouragement and positive motivation. They believe humans seek out fun and want to actualize themselves
“Fun is good.” – Mike Veeck, creator of a variety of innovative and fun baseball promotions Unfortunately, the vast majority of coaches, from the youth level to the professional level, adopt a militaristic coaching style. They believe a taskmaster mentality is how you get the best from athletes. It’s not. “Nothing, according to the research,…
We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis, and it’s crying out for more attention. Lives are being lost to suicide. Depression, anxiety and other forms of mental illness negatively affect entire families, not just the individual suffering. Work productivity is impacted to a significant degree due to mental health issues. And yet, there’s…
Sport at its best is a co-operative activity. We compete with our opponents, not against them
I love to collect quotes on a wide variety of subjects but especially sports. I’ve shared some of my favourites in the past. However, there are so many great ones, I’ve decided to share a few more. We celebrated Jackie Robinson Day on April 15, so I’ll start with a quote from the man who…
A win for the U.S. and its democracy?
Major League Baseball’s decision to move the all-star game out of Georgia and to Colorado will guarantee that state voting laws will be a big story in the days surrounding the game. Colorado’s voting system will undoubtedly get a lot of attention, especially as the July 13 game gets closer. That’s good news, whatever your…
The general approach should be to have experts in each sport come together and decide on the specific rules for allowing fair competition
Most of the sports issues I write about are pretty straightforward – at least in my mind. The solutions seem pretty clear. Do big-time college athletes deserve a bigger slice of the billions being made from their efforts? Undoubtedly. In an era in which childhood obesity is at epidemic levels, and teenage anxiety, depression and…
What constitutes manhood in sports culture is archaic. As if the sports world has been frozen in time – Neanderthal time
What former New York Mets general manager Jared Porter did to a female reporter is despicable. He certainly deserved to be fired after admitting to sending dozens of explicit text messages and photos to the reporter in 2016. The sad part is almost everyone inside baseball – most notably women in baseball – know this…
We’re in the midst of both a COVID-19 pandemic and a childhood physical inactivity epidemic. That creates a dilemma for young athletes and their parents: Is the risk of playing organized sports during the pandemic greater than the risk of the negative physical and mental impacts of not playing? Young people need to move their…
Why is the Cleveland baseball team waiting until 2022 to make the change? Let the healing begin now
Finally, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball (MLB) team says it plans to replace its racist Indians nickname. That’s great news. The Indigenous shouldn’t be used as nicknames and mascots for sports teams in the same way lions, bears and other animals are. Period. But why is the Cleveland organization waiting until 2022 to make the change?…
The policy appears to be ‘the show must go on,’ no matter what the health consequences are
U.S. college basketball’s March Madness is one of my favourite sporting events of the year. The upsets are fun. The one-loss-and-you’re-gone format of the national championship tournament is much more exciting than the long playoff season the National Basketball Association gives us. The bands. The crazy student sections. Switching back and forth between tournament games…
Mental health challenges also negatively impact sports performance
Anxiety and depression are common mental health issues among college students. According to Daniel Eisenberg, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, one in three American college students experience significant symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions. College athletes certainly aren’t immune to these mental health challenges. In…
According to a study from researchers at the Boston University CTE Center, each year a person endures repetitive head collisions from playing football the risk of developing degenerative brain disease increases by 30 per cent. In addition, for every 2.6 years of play, the risk of developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) doubles. This study quantifies…