I have seen a few environments like that and they can be just as corrosive. I have seen middle school kids that were great artists or writers or musicians told that they were failures at life because they weren't one of the 15 best math students in their school.

That's a lot of stuff though to be fair. This On Point episode seems very timely: http://tpr.org/post/big-business-youth-sports . I didn't catch the entire thing but they were discussing some pretty shocking dollar amounts parents spend on sports that are not football.

Great post, thanks. Indeed- we can generalize beyond football. These kids have no time for intellectual curiosity any more. It's really a shame. Again, I blame the parents. They should know better.

But the kids' sports become part of the parents' ego and there's no going back. Source: am parent of three almost grown boys. Two were sports kids, one is not.