{"id":16090,"date":"2011-04-25T18:10:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=16090"},"modified":"2011-04-26T07:24:39","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:24:39","slug":"the-peterson-principle-42511","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=16090","title":{"rendered":"The Peterson Principle 4\/25\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Tim Peterson <\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSG\u2019s Arthur Brown Signs with Dakota Wesleyan\u201d read the headline on our website last Friday afternoon. It\u2019s a headline that would seem to scream for congratulations, pats on the back and a celebration of the fruits and rewards of a four year high school football career.<\/p>\n

Although there were several comments congratulating Brown \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m so proud of you. Good luck and God bless you,\u201d wrote the Czarnicks, there were several others that weren\u2019t so complimentary.<\/p>\n

The only problem with the Czarnicks comment is that there weren\u2019t nearly enough of them and I can\u2019t figure out why.<\/p>\n

A high school athlete can\u2019t win these days, especially a high school athlete in the San Gabriel Valley. If he has a successful high school career, plays a few years, has some fun, and then graduates but decides his days on the football field are over he gets ripped.<\/p>\n

He might go to college, get a degree and go on to a land a good paying job but the criticism still comes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he play anymore? The kid had no heart! He didn\u2019t love it enough,\u201d people say on blogs and in football circles. Why wasn\u2019t playing high school football good enough for them? It was for the athlete and that\u2019s all that should matter.<\/p>\n

Then there is the other end of the spectrum. Another high school athlete will play football and again experience a certain amount of success and glory. Then he takes the walk in June and accepts a scholarship offer to play a sport that he loves (in this case football), but again it\u2019s not to the satisfaction of some people.<\/p>\n

He gets derided for not going to a better school, or hammered for taking what they consider a lesser offer. He hears derogatory things like \u201cyou won\u2019t make it\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re not good enough.\u201d Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Take a look at some of the comments on Brown. One reader calling himself \u201cTruth\u201d was particularly brutal.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe might as well go to a JC. Dakota is not a good football school,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

That is wrong on a number of levels but I\u2019ll only point out a couple. Good football school? I don\u2019t have Dakota Wesleyan\u2019s history in front of me. I don\u2019t know what their record is in football over the last 10 years and I don\u2019t care. It doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

They are offering a scholarship. They are going to let you attend their school and get a free education to do something that you love doing. I wouldn\u2019t care if they won one game in the last five years. THEY ARE GIVING YOU A FREE EDUCATION! How is that a bad thing?<\/p>\n

Attend a JC? If it doesn\u2019t work out that\u2019s always an option but why not jump at the chance to play football while getting an education paid for. A junior college is not going to offer you free tuition. You\u2019ll be buying that.<\/p>\n

Later \u201cTruth\u201d wrote \u201cthis is just another sorry attempt to give SG some pub.\u201d And why not give San Gabriel some publicity? For preparing a young man for four years well enough to receive a football scholarship San Gabriel deserves all the publicity it receives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true San Gabriel has sent several players to Dakota Wesleyan as well as Dakota State. Not every player is going to USC or Florida so why not build a pipeline to the smaller schools? San Gabriel Coach Jude Oliva as well as previous Coach Keith Jones have done an outstanding job of doing just that.<\/p>\n

Bonita\u2019s Garrett Pendleton chose Cal Lutheran last week and apparently that didn\u2019t set well with some folks as well. One comment said he received \u201cbad, bad advice\u201d for accepting an offer to Cal Lu. How is telling a player to accept a college scholarship to play football bad advice? Especially if no other solid offers had come in.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my advice. Congratulations Arthur and Garrett. We wish you all the best. It\u2019s been a joy covering you the last four years.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my principle.<\/p>\n

Tim can be reached at tim@midvalleysports.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSG\u2019s Arthur Brown Signs with Dakota Wesleyan\u201d read the headline on our website last Friday afternoon. It\u2019s a headline that would seem to scream for congratulations, pats on the back and a celebration of the fruits and rewards of a four year high school football career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[526,5203,5202,3177,714,513,389,5201],"class_list":["post-16090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-arthur-brown","tag-cal-lutheran","tag-dakota-state","tag-dakota-wesleyan","tag-garrett-pendleton","tag-jude-oliva","tag-keith-jones","tag-the-czarnicks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16090"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16093,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions\/16093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}