Parents for the love of god please stay out of your son or daughters dugout. Players, stop going to visit mommy and daddy during the game. You might as well go out on the field with an emotional support stuffed animal at this point it’s getting a little nuts. Get their water or whatever they need before the game you don’t need to visit each other 5 times a game and then wonder why they can’t do hard things on their own.
NFL practice squad players earn $234K a year to never play a game. Brady says a lot of them prefer it that way.
$13,000 a week. Same facilities, same planes, same meals as the active roster. Super Bowl ring if the team wins. And zero risk of failing on national television. Brady watched this for 20 years and realized many practice squad players had already reached the exact outcome they wanted.
The active roster pays $840,000 minimum, three and a half times more. But it comes with something most people underestimate: public, measurable, weekly accountability. Drop a pass in the fourth quarter and 70,000 people watched it happen. When practice squad players got promoted into that pressure, they crumbled. Same arms, same legs, same speed. Their talent survived the jump. Their appetite for judgment didn't.
The $606,000 gap between practice squad and active roster is the annual price of pressure-avoidance. Enough NFL players pay it voluntarily that a seven-time Super Bowl champion noticed a pattern.
Every evaluation system on earth measures people when nothing is on the line.
If you want to play varsity H.S. baseball as an underclassman, you better be facing real talent in the offseason.
Quality arms. Good teams. Top competition.
If you’re not challenging yourself against high-level baseball, you won’t be ready for most top varsity programs. Period…
Parents:
Your son doesn’t need a perfect baseball journey.
He needs adversity.
Bad games. Failure. Pressure. Disappointment.
That’s where confidence, toughness, and maturity are built.
Don’t rescue him from every hard moment.
Coaches who only correct never connect.
“Negative experiences without teaching kill morale.” - Nick Saban
The hard moment isn’t the problem.
Leaving it without a lesson is.
That’s what transformational coaching actually looks like.
Every weekend new videos come out of fights at youth baseball games. As someone that’s at a youth tournament almost every weekend with 11 year olds I’m telling you objectively the behavior of adults is getting worse. Parents berating umpires. Umpires chirping coaches and kids. Parents chirping children and opposing coaches. It’s all embarrassing.
If you are a parent that has found themselves a little bit over the top in the past I want to offer some perspective.
We’ve had a 1st rounder. I was on the phone with 5 division 1 coaches yesterday alone. We send every graduating senior to college baseball at every level EVERY year.
No coaches ever ask about their travel baseball record. Zero. Nobody cares. Just enjoy watching your kid have fun.
There is absolutely no reason to crush 12 high noons and start throwing haymakers at some 20 year old umpire because little Billy didn’t win the silver bracket. Get ahold of yourselves you have to go to work on Monday keep it together hoss.
The #1 skill missing from today’s athlete is mental toughness. Refusing to hold oneself accountable to individual and team goals. Blaming others for circumstances. Not fighting through adversity. Pouting and poor body language. Physical skill can only take you so far. Get tough! #DoingDirtWork