Young needs to face facts, quit pouting
Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 4:02 PM
It’s never a good sign when a professional athlete needs his mother to speak up for him. We’re talking about grown men here. And while everybody needs a hug from Mom now and then, they don’t need it in the middle of the locker room.
So this stuff about Vince Young and his mom is troubling. Vince is having some problems winning football games, the fans are booing, he’s sulking and mom is telling the media to lay off her baby boy because “he’s hurting inside and out.”
I’ve no doubt of the accuracy of the statement. Nor do I question for a moment the genuine emotional pain this is causing Felicia Young. No one wants to see her son failing in public and getting booed for it. If I were her, I’d be angry, too.
But I’d keep it between him and me. I’m certainly not going to give an interview to a newspaper to tell the world to lay off my poor darling, even if that’s what I’d wish they’d do. And I doubly wouldn’t say that he’s not sure he wants to play football anymore.
Your heart goes out to both Young and his mother. At the same time, if he’s playing for your team, you have to be cringing over all of this. There’s no crying in the locker room. Especially over being booed.
What the Youngs have to understand is different rules apply when you sign on to play professional sports. There’s a huge upside – money, fame, adulation. That’s the part kids dream about. But if you want that upside, you’ve got to accept that it’s not all beer and skittles. You’ve got to accept that if you don’t play well, the fans and the media are going to tell you about it. The media will be snide and the fans will boo and call you names. They may even call your mother names.
If you want the good stuff, you’ve got to take the bad stuff. It’s like I told my kids when they found some bloggers who take delight in pointing out that I wouldn’t have a room temperature IQ in a walk-in freezer: It’s an honor to be thought important enough to be made fun of. And it is. Even when I get a bit annoyed at the things that are said, I remind myself that it’s really a compliment. At least I’m not ignored.
Young is making a lot of money to be an NFL quarterback. If he doesn’t want criticism, he can go home, get a real job and be as anonymous as the people who are booing him. I don’t think he wants that. I know he doesn’t.
He loved being the man at Texas, loved beating Reggie Bush and USC, loved being a high draft pick, loved being adored everywhere he went during his rookie season. He also loved the pay checks. Who wouldn’t?
Things aren’t going as well now. He’s been watching sports long enough to know that fans boo. He’s probably booed someone himself at some point in his life. I’m kind of curious to know if his mom told him not to do that because it wasn’t nice. Maybe she did. And maybe not.
In any event, whining and pouting and having Mom lecture the media isn’t the way to react. The way it works is he gets angry and redoubles his efforts to learn his craft, then he goes out and turns the boos to cheers. I’m sure his mom won’t call a press conference to ask the fans to stop being nice to her son, which is the problem. You can’t have all the good stuff without accepting that you might also have to endure the bad stuff.
Young will be back. He was understandably down and he reacted childishly. But he’s a competitor. He’s also got a couple of weeks to think about things while his sprained knee heals. Let’s hope he spends it thinking about how the fans aren’t booing because they don’t like him, but because they want him to be as great as they think he can be. It hasn’t been about him as a person, but his performance.
That’s part of the deal. You take the good with the bad. And you don’t let Mom fight your battles for you.
