Last month I attended a practice for the Roswell Coyotes with our sports reporter, Marco Martinez. Kudos to both him and to all of our freelance photographers. They’re doing excellent work.
Anyway, it was a wonderful experience to see these young guys razzing each other and generally having a good time. Then I watched Roswell High’s first game of the season from the sidelines. This was also uplifting: seeing the student section decked in Hawaiian clothing, some truly remarkable athleticism, the intensity of the coaches and the overall vibe of a town that loves its team. It made me lament my lost opportunities. I was a bit of a dork and never competed in high school athletics.
The frontrunner to be Ohio’s next governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, seems to think these endeavors are a waste of time. He argued that modern American culture “promotes mediocrity over excellence.”
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy tweeted in part on December 26, 2024.
This is a false binary. Many young Americans accomplish both — succeeding in academics and extracurriculars. But those whose talents are primarily in athletics, they have bright futures too. Ramaswamy seems to misread the past several decades of our culture. For so long we’ve been bombarded with media that promotes a “Revenge of the Nerds” sentiment. It’s a great movie, but I want programming that inspires strength and masculinity as well. Jocks have a lot of redeeming qualities too.
Initially I fell for Ramaswamy’s schtick. He’s very articulate, defeated Nikki Haley decisively on the debate stage, and I thought he would be an excellent commander in chief. Then the day after Christmas, just before President Trump took office again, Ramaswamy and Elon Musk got into a vicious Twitter battle against immigration hawks within Trump’s MAGA base. The pair dubiously asserted that America must continue importing endless hordes of foreign tech workers in order to defeat China. The more nativist elements of the GOP rightly argued the H1-B system treats these visa holders, who are overwhelmingly Indian, like indentured servants in order to boost corporate profits by suppressing wage growth.
“‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a**es handed to us by China,” Ramaswamy further argued in his post-Christmas essay style tweet. “More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’ More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.'”
What Ramaswamy promotes is not conducive to a happy or fulfilling life. Children are human beings created by God, not GDP widgets. The transition from childhood into a well-adjusted adulthood involves much more than rote memorization and fastidious piano training. Leadership, grit and the ability to work cohesively on a team among other social skills are just as important as academic prowess. The goal must be to shape well-rounded young citizens in an Athenian style education. Going to battle on the gridiron or on a wrestling mat builds character among young men in ways that piano keys and flash cards, useful as those things are, simply cannot.
Athletics are great for young women too. Professional basketball player Caitlin Clark is an important role model for our girls. She always conducts herself with class and turns the other cheek in the face of unwarranted malice. That said, sports are uniquely important for boys because they gravitate more toward competition and hierarchy.
I remember a story I was told by my friend Carlos at my last job. He relayed how he learned an important lesson about grace in defeat after losing a wrestling match at 12 years old. After the loss he was so upset that he chucked his headgear on the floor and stormed out of the gym into the hallway. I can’t recall his exact words but the explanation went something like this, “My dad came out into the hall and told me that if I ever acted like that again, he was going to kick my a** worse than my opponent just did.”
If Indian culture is so superior to that of America, then it makes no sense that Ramaswamy’s parents left India for Ohio. There are many reasons so many major innovations and civilizational advancements over the past 200 years have occurred in America rather than New Delhi. Deeply embedded in American culture is a concept commonly referred to as the Protestant Work Ethic. It means you work your tail off and put in your 40 hours, but that you also never cheat on a timecard and you conduct yourself with integrity in all business dealings. The Ramaswamy family seemingly never assimilated to this principle.
Leading a pharmaceutical company called Axovant, Ramaswamy acquired Alzheimer’s drug Intepirdine, which performed poorly in Phase 2 trials. His mother, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy, conducted a new Phase 2 trial that conveniently demonstrated sufficient improvement for a third phase. Dr. Ramaswamy would later announce that Phase 3 was a flop, but not before her son peddled the drug on MSNBC and benefitted from Axovant’s $350 million IPO.
As Sam Nunberg of Newsweek put it, “While investors suffered significant losses, Ramaswamy profited from a higher media profile, IPO payouts, and the sale of remaining Axovant assets in 2020.”
I am wholly uninterested in lectures on culture from a guy who ran a big pharma scam profiting off one of the most devastating brain diseases affecting elderly Americans.
The bottom line is that I encourage kids to continue showing up to football games dressed in coordinated themes. Keep hanging out and watching TV together. Strive for excellence in your sport. Studying is important, but so is your social development. These are some of best years of your life, don’t let them pass you by without making memories you’ll cherish later on.