Too White to Win (now enhanced with an evolutionary biology lecture!)

Dennis_DeYoung said:

Swaye said:

Dennis_DeYoung said:

I'll just leave this here.

Holy fuckall. I had no idea that generally poly>>>black>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>white

Thanks for posting that. With this knowledge our usual class should look just like this years. Load up on Poly's on either line and at LB (third of the class), load up on blacks at all skill positions and DB (third of the class), grab whites if you have to for QB, WTE and OL (third of the class). BAM. That's the way to do this.

So, I think we are making progress with Polys, clearly... one thing we don't really have any data on is mixed-race kids. For instance, we seem to be able to recruit players with one white parent (Spiker, Lowe, Gordon), but how are we doing with players who have two garden variety AfAm parents (non African).

For me, I'm not really making a eugenics argument, but what I'm doing is saying - can we win with a strategy that seems to require one white parent?

Part of this has to do with the fact that our messaging in recruiting is going to primarily appeal to middle class kids who have had stable environments in childhood.

THIS IS GOING TO BE AN IMPORTANT POINT SO PAY ATTENTION:
(here's a seminal paper in this area if you are really curious)

Humans generally fall into two camps: SLOW STRATEGY and FAST STRATEGY.

Here are the characteristics of each...


The reason this matters for recruiting is the following, most recruits are going to be FAST strategy.

You tend to become FAST strategy (I am) if you had a poor womb environment (I'm adopted, my biological mother was a heroin addict) and unstable environments in early childhood (we were poor and my dad was a raging weirdo). The evolutionary logic goes like this: shit, things are fucked up - I'm going to need to reproduce, better get to puberty fast (this is why chicks at ghetto junior highs have bigger boobs), be impulsive and fuck a lot.

You tend to become SLOW strategy (I am not) if you had a good womb environment (prenatal care, lots of nutrition, not too much stress) and a predictable, stable early childhood environment (enough to eat, etc). The evolutionary logic goes like this: hey, things are good, let's build a palace - I know that takes time, but we have the resources to do it. Everything should be carefully done with an eye toward the future.

This is generally why white people (in the US) are boring and great innovators in creative endeavors tend to come from disadvantaged back-grounds.

What this has to do with recruiting is obvious: we are basically optimizing our program to appeal to SLOW STRATEGY kids. This means that telling a FAST STRATEGY kid, 'this is going to be the hardest thing you'll ever do' is probably not going to be a message that resonates.

There are two reasons why I think this is an unfortunate recruiting pitch.

1. You are basically eliminating fast strategy kids from contention (and those are generally going to be what poor kids are).
2. You deny the awesome benefits of Pete's program to those kids because of their lack of ability to appreciate it on the front end.

Anyway, that's your evolutionary biology lecture for today, but I think one reason we are getting whiter and whiter (most of what we call 'black' kids on our team have non-black parents), is that we are primarily appealing to SLOW STRATEGY kids. There are just WAY more white kids like that and kids like Terrell Bynum who are from middle + classes.

If you've ever watched the 30 for 30 on the Fab 5 and their criticisms of guys like Grant Hill, this is the essence of that difference (though there are amplifying cultural factors, obviously).

I just don't think we can win Natties with a program that is tailored to appeal to and serve SLOW STRATEGY kids. I think we need to make some room for getting FAST STRATEGY kids in the program and working with them when they're here. Research shows that FAST strategy kids do exceptionally well in good, supportive environments, by the way.