The Ultimate Outlier

I don't know how you feel about Malcolm Gladwell, but one of the things he wrote in "Outliers" that really spoke to me was about youth sports and birthdays.

The best way for me to explain it is this: let's say you have to be 5 years old to start kindergarten. Well, everyone's birthday is different so some kids turn 5 at the beginning of the school year, and some turn 5 at the end. So a kid who turned 5 at the beginning of the year is a full year OLDER than a kid who turned 5 at the end.

At that age, that's a big deal. The older kid is probably going to be more advanced, is probably going to get more attention, and is probably going to have a more opportunities.

I couldn't agree with this more. I feel like my entire life would be different if I had entered kindergarten a year later. But it's even more of a factor for one of my best friends, whose birthday is in August. Our other good friend's birthday is in September. We didn't think about it at the time, but they were actually a full year apart in age, yet in the same grade.

He had to be one of the youngest kids in our class. Not a big deal, you may think. But it just so happens that in his first year of college, he GREW A FOOT TALLER.

He wasn't a force on our high school basketball team at 5'11, but he would've been at 6'7". His parents fucked us out of a state championship...or at least possibly (though I doubt it) a few more wins. Go Cougs! Beat the Mats!

There has been more attention paid to this recently because 60 Minutes did a story about it - apparently a lot of parents read Gladwell's book and are following that advice.

My sisters have kids, so do a lot of my friends, and I yell at them about this. And yet, they don't care. They think it's no big deal.

All right, fine.

In a completely separate story, my mom and sister have been telling me to read a book called "Don't Put Me In, Coach" by Mark Titus.

I know of Mark Titus because he is a semi-famous sports blogger. His fame came from the fact that he was a walk on to the Ohio St. basketball team and never got off the bench, and would write funny things about his plight.

So I finally started reading this book. At the very beginning, he writes about his childhood experience, and how "for some reason" he was the first kid in his class to hit puberty and was bigger and taller than all of the other kids.

Well, needless to say, alarm bells started going off in my brain. I immediately went on wikipedia to see when this dude was born. Guess what: it was in late June.

He was 19 years old when he started his freshman year at Ohio St. Contrast this to my 6'7" friend, who turned 19 AFTER his freshman year.

Do you see what's going on here? It wasn't a coincidence that he hit puberty before everyone else and was bigger than the other kids, he was older than them! By a lot.

Now, you might say, that's not that big a deal. 

Ha! Not according to Mark Titus. According to him, being bigger than the other kids completely changed his life in every way imaginable. Because of it, he was too big to play basketball with his schoolmates. He had to join an AAU club team, and by joining a club team, he then got recruited to the best club team, where his teammates were Greg Oden and Mike Conley, the two studs on Ohio St. who helped get him on the team.

Here's a little bit from the book:

"For the time being, what was important was that I had my foot in the door and was now a member of the best AAU team in the country. The opportunities that came with this would prove to be staggering, as there's no way in hell I ever would have played at Ohio St, become one of the most famous walk-ons of all time, or been give n a book deal to talk about it all had I never been on that AAU team. Basically, my entire identity would have been completely different from what it is today."

It's important to note that Mark Titus' stopped growing soon after this. His coaches thought he was going to grow into a monster, but he pooped out before junior high was over. And yet the head start he was given, with the false notion that he was ahead of his classmates, put him in such a great situation that the tide carried him up to the big time anyway. It's almost like a scam. 

Very interesting stuff. I'm sure when I have a kid I will remember this, and then be so happy to get them out of the house that I won't give a shit. Because being a parent is hard.