Ridger Sports: Is money all you need?

Sometimes people quote the Bible when they have a discussion about money.

“Money is the root of all evil,” I have often heard people say.

To have a successful sports team, season or program usually involves the expenditure of capital or money. In my 36 years of teaching and several years before that, I noticed that the more successful teams had better stuff - i.e., better facilities, better equipment, perhaps even better coaches. I also took note that these same teams were in schools with better economic conditions.

When the new football/ track complex opens this fall (hopefully), Pea Ridge will arguably have one of the best, if not THE best athletic facilities of any school in 4A in the state. Money hasn’t just been expended on athletics, though, as the sports program was the last of many building projects.

Since I arrived on the scene in 1998, all the schools here have been replaced or upgraded. That all took a lot of money.

I have experienced a similar situation when my children attended high school.

My children were in school in Bentonville during the time the enrollment began to skyrocket. At that time, they had average facilities for a 4A school but pretty sorry for a 7A team.

The Tigers weren’t too great early on, even refusing to play football with the “big boys” for a few years as school officials thought they had no chance to be competitive. With increasing amounts of money coming in, they eventually got good, then great facilities, even better than a lot of colleges. As far as salaries and expenses, at one point a couple of years ago, it was revealed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Bentonville was spending as much for their coaches as all the Little Rock high schools put together. It isn’t surprising the Tigers have attracted some good coaches.

The result? The Tigers are winning state titles in about everything: golf, tennis, football, track, cross country, baseball, soccer and swimming. Basketball seems to be the only sport that they have thus far failed to rule or dominate.

So back to my first question, “Is money all you need?”

Yes and no.

Relating to professional sports, the folks who own and run the Los Angeles Angels decided they were going to break the bank and buy enough superstars to win a championship. They paid perennial St. Louis All-Star Albert Pujols $252 million to leave the Redbirds and go west. What happened? Pujols had the worst year of his baseball career and the Angels tanked.

Los Angeles then went out and bought the services of former AL MVP Josh Hamilton from Texas for a boatload of money. What’s happened so far? He is having a miserable year in the early going, batting less than .200 last time I checked. For most of this young season, one of the best teams money can buy is languishing in last place in the AL West. While having money and good facilities is a great thing, and while those things can really help in having a successful athletic program, it isn’t the magic ingredient.

While it is hard to be successful with crummy facilities, there are teams that do win with little. Little Butler University in Indiana has had high national rankings in the past four NCAA basketball campaigns and their overall sports budget pales into insignificance compared to most large universities. Locally, Decatur High School has been catching headlines with its more successful sporting teams, and they didn’t do it with money.

The considerable money spent locally in upgrading facilities shows the dedication to young people by school patrons, the ones who actually own the school. Going further, without the wisdom and careful consideration of those who make decisions that affect the sporting programs, it really doesn’t matter what you build or don’t.

The magic ingredient to sports success - or success in just about anything - is commitment. Commitment by the school to give the students the best opportunities possible, the commitment of the parents to support and encourage their young athletes, and, especially, the commitment of the athletes themselves to become the best possible student/athlete possible.

Commitment to a goal or ideal makes things which once seen as improbable or impossible, possible. School sports teams, I have long believed, are as about as good as they want them to be.

“They” being the students, staff, officials and parents.

I believe in the law of averages. I believe that there exists in any and every school the potential for success. The more that students go out and participate in sports with a winning attitude, coupled with the appropriate responses and actions of involved adult individuals, the more successful will be the results. More often than not, schools with well thought out, successful athletic programs are just as successful academically.

It’s that commitment thing again.

Oh, by the way, while I have heard that money is the root of all evil, that really isn’t a biblical teaching. Properly understood, the thought was that the love of money was the root of all evil. Money is but a tool, something you have to have and something that has great power for good, if used properly.

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John McGee is an award winning columnist and sports writer. He is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times.

He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].