michael beasleyMuch has been written (see here, here, and here) about Michael Beasley’s breakdown over the weekend and subsequent trip to rehab – the word today is that this was a ‘planned visit‘ for last year’s transgression at the rookie transition program – but this thought is one that might be seriously worth exploring:

The games are overrun with stage parents, manipulative agents, conniving coaches and exploitive owners. Kids are in over their heads, particularly kids from one- or no-parent families. And now there’s no longer a support-maturation process. There’s no safety net. God, I hate to sound old, but America needs to reinstitute the military draft. Eighteen-year-olds used to spend two to four years in a disciplined, supportive environment before being given the freedom to ruin their lives.

We’ve briefly visited this topic before, and though we can’t remember the exact post in which it was discussed, there seemed to be consensus: Parents are the key to kids getting on the right track early, but increasingly (especially for young athletes), that sort of guidance seems to be lacking. There’s no data to back this up, it is a purely subjective observation. A military draft will obviously never happen, but what if parents had the opportunity to put their potentially-elite athletes in a military school that catered to sports as well as discipline – and was kept at a safe distance (read: underground) from the flesh peddlers of AAU basketball and the nearly-as-seedy college basketball coaches? Would that do the trick?

As for Beasley, the more we look back on stories and quotes about him prior to the draft, his current struggles off-the-court shouldn’t come as a surprise. Remember how he was carrying four cell phones during March madness, prompting one writer to opine: “Everybody wants a piece of Michael Beasley.” He attended six high schools (booted from one for the ‘ol dead-rat-in-the-teacher’s-desk trick), and then when it came time to pick a college, he made it easy – he was a package deal with friend/coach Dalonte Hill.

(Charlotte was their first choice because the 49ers were willing to hire Hill; but then Bob Huggins hired him away to Kansas State to secure Beasley. When Huggins left after one season for WVU, Kansas State foolishly upped his pay to an unheard-of $420,000 ostensibly because he would be able to pull future players of Beasley’s caliber to the program. How Hill-Beasley wasn’t one of the 10 best package deals of all time, we’ll never know.)

We just hope that a football player who seems to be on the Beasley track – Tennessee signee Bryce Brown – can avoid the same problems.

Early fame, pressure can crush young athletes like Beasley (KC Star)