SCALZO: Participation trophies aren’t the problem

My name is Joe Scalzo. I’m 36 years old. And over a five-year football career that stretched from fourth grade to eighth grade, I earned five participation trophies.

Afterward, I attended a high school that handed out tambourines instead of grades, worked several jobs that paid in hugs instead of money and spent every waking moment of my adult life trying to destroy the values that made this country great in hopes that we’ll all be speaking Mandarin in 10 years.

And it all could have been avoided if only James Harrison had been my father instead of a big-hearted Akron police officer.

On the off chance that you don’t follow Harrison on Instagram — and if you don’t know what Instagram is, don’t worry; like Harrison, no one will remember it in five years — the Steelers linebacker made headlines last week by promising to return his kids’ participation trophies SDLquntil they EARN a real trophy,” adding, “I’m not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best… cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better.”

This is the stupidest, phoniest, most contrived non-controversy since people got bent out of shape over Caitlin Jenner winning an ESPY, forcing me to waste several precious seconds of my life acknowledging the existence of both Caitlin Jenner and the ESPYs.

Because here’s the thing: If your kid isn’t old enough to grow armpit hair — and by the way, Harrison’s sons are 6 and 8 — participation trophies aren’t the problem. Not participating is.

The argument against participation trophies is that kids will somehow think that, because they got a cool keepsake at the end of the season, they’re all winners. Balderdash. My fourth-grade football team went 0-6 and scored three touchdowns all season. The next two years, I was on teams that won the league championship. I got trophies every year. It didn’t leave me confused about the difference between winning and losing — they had scoreboards and stopwatches in the late 1980s — but it did make the team banquet a little more fun.

Oh, and let me tell you something, James Harrison. I earned those participation trophies. Earned one in fourth grade when I tried to run off-tackle into kids who were already shaving. Earned one in sixth grade when I lined up at tight end and tried to block a 6-foot tall defensive lineman who started deer hunting when he was still in the womb and went on to date a future Ohio State cheerleader. Earned one in eighth grade when I lined up at outside linebacker and stayed home on a reverse, only to look like a first-time ice skater when it came time to tackle the guy in space.

It’s easy to participate when you’re good. It’s a lot tougher to crab-walk up a hill in full pads during August conditioning when you know you’re going to spend the next two months as one of the Washington Generals.

Varsity sports are about winning and losing. Elementary school sports are about having fun. The parents who say otherwise are the same ones who end up getting in fights with Little League umpires in the parking lot or congratulating themselves on social media for treating youth sports like the NFL.

This week, one of the Harrisons acted like a 6-year-old. The other one got a trophy.

Joe Scalzo covers sports for The Vindicator. Write to him at scalzo@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter @JoeScalzo1.