Head Strong: Student athletes a little too focused

The day of the three-sport varsity letterman is now as dated as the sweater. Sadly, today's student-athletes are focused on one sport at an increasingly early age. As a result, too many are missing their best opportunity to enjoy a range of team sports before they're sidelined by adulthood.

In a sign of the times, an outfit called the Fertility Institutes has claimed that a procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis will allow it to "greatly increase" parents' probability of selecting specific physical attributes for their babies.

Right now, that means things such as eye and hair color, or skin pigmentation. But already, some people are eyeing the slippery slope. A recent survey of 999 "genetic counseling" patients revealed that 10 percent of respondents supported prenatal testing to help achieve a desired height. Thirteen percent would test for superior intelligence. Ten percent would do so for athletic ability.

As Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said to me last week: "Is everybody going to go down to the baby-manufacturing center and say, 'Hey, I want this kid with these traits. And you know, if the kid is born without them, I guess that's a product defect?' "

The idea that parents would "mold" a kid for athletic prowess is a particularly alarming part of our culture, but not a surprise in light of other developments. There's already a burgeoning market for $149 DNA tests claiming (on the basis of one gene among tens of thousands) to predict the types of athletic activities at which your 3-year-old child will excel.

And last month the NCAA deemed seventh-grade basketball players "recruitable" and thus subject to the same rules and regulations as high school players.

With regard to football, consider the inaugural Football University Youth All-American Bowl, three games (played in January at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas) featuring 143 of the best seventh- and eighth-grade football players from all over the country.

Meanwhile, Football University's network of invitation-only youth camps runs from February to July. In other words, the bulk of the off-season. There, the best young prospects - those in seventh grade through high school - pay $40 per hour for highly specialized football training from NFL-level instructors.

Rich McGuinness is the president of SportsLink, the sports-marketing company that came up with Football University and the Youth All-American Bowl. He said such efforts were already under way in other sports, where young athletes are routinely singled out in junior high school.

"I think football's actually late to this game," McGuinness told me.

The problem isn't with trying to identify potential blue-chip athletes at an early age. It's the pressure of one-sport specialization that eliminates too many kids' multisport experiences and creates false expectations of superstardom in those who do get into the game.

At the rate we're going, dugouts will need to be lined with high chairs, and Gatorade will launch a brand of apple juice. Need new Under Armour? Try Baby Gap.

There was something to be said for the era in which the starting quarterback was a reserve on the basketball team and a pitcher in the spring. Today's student-athletes are narrowing their focus too soon. They pick "their" sport, play on three or four teams, practice year-round, and develop a sense of competitiveness far more intense than anything ever previously experienced. And for what, dreams of long-shot glory or scholarships?

Meanwhile, parents are forced to play taxi driver for kids in need of a ride to the hockey rink before dawn. Or to a couple of soccer games per weekend. Or a double-header on a summer day.

Too many parents and kids have lost sight of the statistical reality that the overwhelming majority of young athletes aren't going to play professionally. Most high school seniors aren't even going to play in college. I doubt AAU coaches are mentioning that in the huddle.

The irony of sports specialization at an early age is the fact that many of the athletes youngsters seek to emulate are products of a more general sports education themselves. Michael Jordan played baseball and football as a kid. Allen Iverson was a state champion high school quarterback long before he ever went to the NBA Finals. In 2007, legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus, who played intramural football, basketball and volleyball in college, told the Associated Press that having kids specialize in golf is "idiotic."

That Tiger Woods, perhaps the poster boy for sports specialization, is bearing down on Nicklaus' record of 18 Major victories shouldn't dissuade us. Tiger is the exception amid a field of exceptions. Recognizing that might be the first step in slowing down our kids' breakneck paths to stardom.