America’s Sick Youth Sports Culture

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- A 17-year-old soccer player in Utahwas recently charged with homicide for fatally punching areferee who had just given him a yellow card. Maybe you rememberthe story. Or maybe you’ve already conflated it with thecountless others like it -- tales of kids, coaches andespecially parents acting like utter idiots at youth sportingevents, occasionally with tragic consequences.

It has gotten to the point where 21 states have lawsaddressing assaults on officials. America’s youth sports cultureis sick. But the conventional diagnosis of the illness has itbackward: The problem isn’t that we take youth sports tooseriously. It’s that we don’t take them seriously enough. As aresult, we’re producing bad citizens and bad athletes.