Lupica on Today show

What Lupica did with his kid who did not make travel hoops team is stuff of legend in New Canaan where he lives.

Lupica's kid gets beat out at point guard by commissioners kid. Lupica raises huge stink, cries favoritism and ends up starting his own travel team.Lupica then writes thinly veiled vindicitive fictional book that starts a cottage industry of kids sports books.

Reality was that kid who beat out Luppy's kid was better. He ended up starting point guard on HS team and made all state.

The leason learned by Luppy's kid - Your daddy and his check book will bail you out.

Luppy is a good example of parents who can ruin it for kids. I've watched him coach soccer against my 6 year old niece and he runs up and down sidelines yelling non stop like Rick Pitino. This is for 6 year old rec soccer.

 

I've watched him coach soccer against my 6 year old niece and he runs up and down sidelines yelling non stop like Rick Pitino. This is for 6 year old rec soccer.

This needs to be on youtube so bad. This needs to be on the internet in the worst possible way.

 

Boom:

Are you saying Mike Lupica is not the most perfect human being to walk the face of the earth? That he has not been chosen as a representative of sports writers and fans? That his is not the voice whom we should all follow with devotion and without question?

I am shocked, shocked I tell you.

Did I get this sarcasm font right?

 

Good response. I still remember getting cut from my school hoop team in 8th grade and my parents (correctly) telling me it wasn't fair.

The coach that year had just recovered from having some sort of brain tumor, and although he was physically OK, his personality had changed from when he coached me and a great group of my close friends to a near-perfect record as sixth graders. Basically, he'd become a jackass in the succeeding two years and rather than keeping the successful group together, he decided to go out and start recruiting local "all stars" for the team, finding loopholes for the fact that most of them didn't even attend the school. So even though I was one of the better players on a near-perfect team in 6th grade, two years later, I was bounced.

Were my parents supposed to tell little Jackie that he just wasn't good enough and I'd have to deal with that like a man? No. They correctly told me the coach was being a jackass, theorizing only that the brain tumor may have had something to do with it.

The only saving grace of it was, the group of all-stars stunk up the league.

So screw you, BW. I'm still playing (and kicking ass) 30 years later.

 

It would be a gem - Luppy has very short legs and its commical watching him run. Perhaps for same video I could stick my leg out by accident and trip him.

 

No. Get your niece to do it.

 

As shitty as Lupica is, at least he can spawn kids and keep a wife.

Women don't even like being in the same room with other writers UNLESS they are paying HANDSOMELY.

 

That's a lie, bruh. I don't require women to pay me just to be in the same room with me.

 

I agree with the travel team culture stuff -- I think there is a place for it, but when I start getting e-mails -- which I did today -- from the Little League organization about try-outs for the 7-year old tournament baseball team it makes my skin crawl.

I don't think there is any need for any of it until at least age 14 or 15.

Let kids play in rec leagues and let the better kids play in a higher classification if they want to pursue it further. There is no need to be married to a sport at age 9 just because a bunch of adults with really big egos and very small you-know-whats get their jollies out of creating midget league All Americans (as well as spots for their own kids) while claiming they are helping kids.

Every kid develops and matures physically at a different age and the problem is, too many of the later developing kids have been squeezed out of the fray because they weren't fast enough or strong enough or big enough at age 8 to be included with the "stars" and they get discouraged and find something else to do with their time.

Youth sports shouldn't be about exclusion, but rather inclusion at least until kids have a chance to grow and develop. The good kids will still develop into the great ones and the others will fall out of contention as they grow up, but at least politics and how big the check book of daddy or mommy is wouldn't be the determing factor in which kids move forward and which ones quit.

And parents like Mike Lupica sounds to be -- you know, slobbering psycho's who have enough money to start their own teams if their kid isn't good enough--should be hit in the head with a sledge hammer oh, I don't know, once for every time they've complained to a coach about playing time or to a league about their kid's lack of making a team.

 

What's this a post without a poor attempt at ebonics or a closing sentence of "Keeping it real, you all?" -- Sportsbruh, quick, get back in character because you almost had us convinced you were really a black guy.

 

Just a tip of the cap to whomever posted that kissingsuzykolber link.

That still might be the funniest thing I have ever read...

 

I'm not sure what a "travel" team is but I suspect it's some sort of all-star/rep team that plays all over the fucking place. It's basically a team of elite players, right? We probably have the same thing but don't call it that.

Here's how youth hockey is structured up her.

The first level is "house league" or recreational league. You pay, you play. Some good kids but mostly average players. Play for fun, get a trophy even if they lose all 20 games. No big deal.

Rep team--usually the best players from all the house league teams in each age group.

They go to tournaments but also have their own schedule (in addition to their house league schedule)

In Toronto, we have the Greater Toronto Hockey League, the largest minor hockey league in the world that has, in addition to house league and rep teams, three different levels: A, AA & AAA.

It's at the AA & AAA level where you meet the wacko parents (and I've met my share).

However, it's kids from AAA that will eventually be drafted at 15 into the Canadian Hockey League ( a small percentage) and when they hit 18, a small percentage of those kids playing junior will get drafted by the NHL.

There's nothing exclusionary here. Some kids are better, some kids want to play at a higher level and some parents are delusional. The latter doesn't negate the other two valid reasons for elite teams.