No ‘I’ in ‘team’

But who really pays attention to spelling anymore?

Many moons ago, I was on a team of reporters and editors during the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s 1990s expansion of coverage in Northwest Arkansas. While our concentration was in this region, as reporters for a statewide newspaper, it wasn’t unusual for us to want our stories to earn a spot on the front page across the state.

After a while, we started joking — well, sort of half-joking — about what it took to earn one of those coveted spots: Get either the Hogs or Eureka Springs in the lead paragraph and it was almost a guarantee your story would at least be in the running. Eureka Springs because editors in Little Rock believed readers all over Arkansas were intrigued by the quirky happenings of the colorful Carroll County town. And the Hogs, well, because it’s the Hogs.

Not being on the news coverage side of the operation any more, I’m not sure whether Eureka Springs continues its popularity as a statewide subject, but there’s no doubt the Hogs still do. The newspaper devotes considerable resources to covering not just the Razorbacks, but the young men and women who might one day become Razorbacks.

Some readers soak up every word about the Hogs, and devotedly read the newspaper’s outstanding recruiting coverage that details which high school phenoms so much as glance toward Fayetteville as they consider where to take their athletic talents.

But I gave up reading about these high school kids a long time ago because their serious consideration for the Razorbacks is all over the map. None of them can be relied on until they’re on campus putting on a school jersey. Plus, the entire recruiting process is filled with gamesmanship (not the positive kind) and manipulation. Those verbal “commitments” the recruits make are eroding the very power of the word itself.

Last week, that genre of commitment became the hot topic after five-star quarter Tate Martell of Las Vegas decided to “de-commit” from the Aggies of Texas A&M. Later, A&M assistant coach Aaron Moorehead posted on Twitter the following: “I feel sorry for ppl who never understand loyalty. I can’t really even vibe with u. At the end of the day trust is 100 and everything else is BS.”

He continued: “People talk about leadership and this generation flip flops like [it’s] nothing. That’s a real issue. My dad would have whipped my ass,” followed by “Scared for this next group of kids. There is no accountability and no sense of positivity when it comes to adversity #selfish #allaboutme.”

Moorehead’s comments were legitimate observations, as loyalty has become an elusive characteristic in the arena of collegiate athletics but also in employer-employee relations, in the political world and other aspects of our lives. But they were lousy comments for a coach involved in the tempestuous world of college recruiting. The reaction was rapid.

Another top recruit soon used social media to reveal he was no longer committed to Texas A&M, citing Moorehead’s impetuous tweet. Then a third revealed to the world that he was cutting Texas A&M from his list of possible collegiate destinations.

Again, the world of social media demonstrates the power of the megaphone: A comment that might have once remained just an offhand remark or short-term venting of frustration to a colleague becomes a public spectacle with lasting reverberations.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Moorehead lost his job over the situation because of its impact on A&M recruiting, but here’s the thing: He’s not wrong. The NCAA rules and how its member institutions behave create these high school attention-hogs and empower them to play mind games with commitments that can be changed in an instant. Then, once they sign their real letters of intent on national signing day, some of them play a year or two then transfer when everything doesn’t go just so.

There are parents and coaches of 8-, 10- and 12-year olds who teach their kids that joining a team means a commitment to show up, to be there when they feel good and when they don’t, and to play hard whether the score is tied or they happen to be on the wrong side of a blowout. But college athletics, particularly in terms of recruitment, delivers a message that commitment doesn’t really mean commitment. It just means “You’re my choice until something better comes along.”

The great coach Vince Lombardi once said “Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

There used to be no “I” in “team,” but in case you haven’t noticed, a lot gets misspelled on social media.

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Greg Harton is editorial page editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Contact him by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAGreg.

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