Easy Eddie, Todd Marinovich, and The Legacy Myths About Passing on Talent-Part 2-
Todd: This is a story about the most extreme football dad that I've ever known.
Joe: So, by extreme, you mean like a drunk at a game shouting at his kid?
Todd: This is from crib to death football father, and it’s the Todd Marinovich story. Todd was the son of Marv Marinovich, and Marv was a sports and conditioning guy. He worked for a lot of NFL teams and collegiate teams. His best gig was being the strength and conditioning coach for the Oakland Raiders. He stated that he would make his son, Todd, the best football quarterback in the history of the world. Todd was bred to be a superstar. From psychologists, physical fitness, coaching, to nutrition/dieting, he built this kid up. Marv put in all his time and money into Todd – nothing else mattered to him. Then the day game in 1991 when Todd was drafted in the first round by the Los Angeles Raiders.
Joe: I'm sure this made Marv happy with a son now and forever, right?
Todd: It wasn't uncommon for his dad to be punching out other parents. One time he threw the neighbor over the fence. He wanted to make Todd so competitive he even made him box stronger kids to get beaten up. Overall, Todd just wanted to please his father, and his whole life was competitive, violent, and had tons of physical abuse. Being a first-round pick, Todd was better than anyone and had all the potential in the world. He was more mature because he'd been brought up in this culture of football his whole life. But though he was ahead of everybody else physically, he wasn’t mentally. Because of his upbringing, he was so insecure and scared. He was like a little pet that was trapped and beaten. Because of his emotional problems, he turned to drugs and alcohol. He became a raging alcoholic and a drug addict. His life just spiraled out of control. More so, players like him usually play 16 games a season, yet Todd only played for eight games his whole career. In short, this all accounts to him not being loved as a child.
Joe: If we're just talking about strictly trying to build a kid to have your talent, this seems like a pretty stark example of that not working.
Todd: The measurable thing, of course, is the money. Most NFL quarterbacks retire with about 50 million dollars. Todd, based on cautionary tales, is worth about $20,000. I’m going to leave this part with this quote from SI Sports Illustrated: “Marv knew only one way to live, through sports. And his son would commit to that way completely. All Marv wanted to mold was athletes, and Todd was his favorite piece of clay.”
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This will be the second half of our two-part podcast about legacy - what we try to give our children when we're gone and what we actually leave behind. In part one, we talked about Easy Eddie O'Hare, the mob lawyer who helped bring down Al Capone. In that, we answered questions about inheritance and reputation. In this episode on legacy, we're focusing on talent. Can we pass talent on to our children? If I'm a genius football coach, why can't I turn my son into a star quarterback from birth? If I'm a doctor and I marry a doctor, we should have genius doctor kids, right?
Myth 1: If I want a sports kid, I should make them do sports. If I want a creative kid, I should make them do art. No need to fill their heads with useless subjects.
Going back to part one or a moment, Easy Eddie (a mob lawyer) gets his son Butch into the Naval Academy. He manages to swing that and clean up his act and get his reputation straight enough for Butch to end up on the Lexington. And then when Butch goes up to defend the Lexington, he does it against bombers. Eight of them were coming for the Lexington to bomb it with 2,000 men on it. He bravely went straight at them, gunning down five of them and damaging six. I don't know what's more extraordinary - his courage or his aim. But regardless, he saved the ship.
Because today's episode is about passing on talent, let's ask the question if you can design a legacy of talent for your kids. We had an episode about the World Cup and the Olympics where we covered the hormones you experience when you see your kids succeed. I wonder if that's really more about the hormones you get when you see someone succeeding with your genetic code. Have you ever seen Dance Moms? It does not matter what field or level the kid is at; when you set them up for that level of success, I think the hormones must be the same.
To get into this more, we wanted to answer those questions - we wanted to answer if you can live through your kids “hormone wise." Meaning, can you experience the same hormones as watching a team succeed as they are doing it? We also want to find out if there was a difference in placing your kid in sports or into something creative like dance. Lastly, what are the chances that your kid will do better in one or the other? Our first study looked at organized sports and if isolating an activity will create a super kid who can do that.
This comes from the University of Texas at Austin, and they studied scores on creativity. They looked at kids who didn't do organized sports and kids who did organized sports. The million-dollar question was if organized sports were good for a kid's growth.
They found that the above-average kids were the ones who did an even number of organized and disorganized sports. They were more well-rounded and not laser-focused on just one thing. I'm going to quote the study here: “Those scoring on the above-average creativity bracket reported spending 15% of their total childhood in leisure time playing informal supports versus 13% playing organized sports.” All in all, free play and taking breaks is a good thing for childhood development, and so is being well-rounded with different activities.
Myth 2: Can I live through my kids? Dance moms do it, and drunk football dads do it. Is there something wrong with enjoying my child's achievements a bit too much?
About the question we asked earlier - do you have the same hormone level and the same feeling of victory watching your kid accomplish something as they do? We're going to use some research from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. They talk about how parents who experienced unresolved disappointment from the past feel pride and fulfillment when they can bask in their children's glory. It is almost like an emotional healing function. So, if you were a failed football player and your kid is absolutely kicking butt on the field, it doesn't just give you the hormonal boost of seeing your team win; it also helps heal emotional wounds. But that comes with an almost direct exchange from your kid. Being healed by your kids’ accomplishments can be draining for a child. They don't have an infinite amount of “emotional goodness” to bandage your ego. It directly costs them from that pressure. They know when you're happy or sad; they can feel it. Evolution has given them this tool to where we had an episode about approval. We found out that kids are basically built to see pride and see when you approve of them. So that is something that they are going to be hyper-aware of.
In our last episode of this legacy podcast, we talked about how your behaviors stick with your kids longer than money because emotional stability and emotional confidence carry on to your kids. Even if it's not on the surface, having your parents pay a little bit less attention because you didn't win the dance competition does take effect on you. You are built to look out for that as a kid. According to that study, if the kid does not perform well and their parents scream, it can get ugly for kids. In turn, this causes the kids to have instilled anger and meanness in them as they become adults. This study also talks about how when kids grow up, the thing that they struggled with the most due to their parents' living through was forming their own identities. They are at higher risk for mental health problems as a direct result of that.
So, if you are dealing with past regrets or disappointments from what you didn't accomplish in life, there is still time. You can still work on accomplishments and things that you can do to self-develop without relying on your kids to do it for you. And just think that if you believe that leaving your kid with a legacy of throwing a good spiral or having a dance trophy is ideal, your legacy efforts would be better served by you growing stronger and being better equipped to accept the past and enjoy the present with them. Because the more happy, stable, and mentally strong you are, the more happy, stable, and mentally strong your kids will be. That is much more valuable of a legacy than a trophy is.
Myth 3: Can we train our kids from birth? If I superglue a golf club in my kid's hand, can I make the next Tiger Woods?
We had an episode recently where we talked about Elon Musk starting his own Montessori school and that his five kids were like making flamethrowers and stuff under a private teacher. So, we're going to talk about Montessori, and we're going to talk about the growth learning pod idea. Basically, what is the most efficient way to give our kids skills and have them have a legacy of talent, not necessarily the ones some parents force their kids to have. As seen above, forcing kids to do an activity will likely backfire either now or later on in their lives. In summary, you can't force your kids to have talent; you can only really nurture it because if you force a talent on them, you end up with anxiety, self-esteem disorders, and depression, and potentially suicide if things get really bad. They do it just because they feel like they have to because of their parents. But in the end, they're going to gain the total opposite talents - crippling disorders.
So, I tried to find the best way to nurture talent, and what I could find was benefits that are conducted in Montessori schools. At a Montessori school, teachers are trained to look for when a kid is receptive to information, and these kids are generally much more creative, independent, and advanced. Now, psychologists, including Angeline Lillard of the University of Virginia, studied Montessori schools in Milwaukee. These Milwaukee studies talk about how various tests ranging from letter word identification to math, the Montessori kids outscored their public-school counterparts in almost everyone. Those kids more commonly resorted to reasoning. If you’re wondering what the advantage of that freeform schooling angle is, these kids resort to reasoning 43% of the time, whereas public school kids were using it 18%.
Would it surprise you to know that these gains do not exactly stick with kids if they are not still in Montessori later on? These advantages wash off a little bit. In a study from Scientific American, they said these gains at an early age do not seem to translate directly to an older cohort of 12 years old. The researchers also tested both Montessori and regular school kids, and each performed equally well on the skill test. However, the older Monastery children did write better essays based on blinded ratings. So, if they drop out of that school, some of that benefit goes away, but they still use more reasoning later in life.
Final Thoughts
If you're looking to pass on a lasting legacy, here are a few tips that are backed by science and statistics. Wealth doesn't last. 90% of family-owned businesses are sold or lost by the third generation. The same holds true for vast wealth in general, with the bulk of the inheritance from a wealthy earner evaporating within their grandchildren's lifetime again with 90% predictability.
Living through your kids’ accomplishments or forcing greatness upon them appears to be just as foolish. If the memory you leave your children is of a mom forcing them to practice piano 8 hours a day or a dad making them do the perfect spiral until sundown, the only legacy you're leaving is depression and anxiety.
Want to leave a real, lasting legacy for your kids? Teach them how to cultivate social skills by being an example. Everything you do in their presence will impact the way your children behave -from your emotional control, your aggression levels to your personal independence. The best legacy you can leave is leaving a good example.
Instead of trying to bequeath your children mounds of cash, spend that money on providing a stable environment and educational opportunities. Instead of pushing your children to be high achievers, promote curiosity and reasoning skills. Your mantra shouldn't be inheritance and awards; it should be curiosity, reasoning, and reputation. After all, if Easy Eddie O'Hare had insisted on leaving his son Butch a shady law practice and a dog track, we might all be speaking Japanese. Finally, say what you will about the beauty of the Japanese language, but there's a certain ring to hearing “now arriving at O'Hare International Airport.”