Imagine this. The guy you’ve been talking to for about a month suddenly comes up to you at lunch and says, “I don’t think we should talk anymore. It’s not you, it’s me. I have to focus on basketball.” It doesn’t have to be basketball. It can be baseball, soccer or whatever other sport your imaginary man plays. You go off your separate ways, and a few days later you see him with another girl after school. What happened here? He just used the typical excuse most boys use because they don’t want a damaging image. They just can’t take accountability for their actions.
Let’s make this clear, before I go any further: this is not from my own experience. I’m not some love-sick individual who got their heart broken by a basketball player, but I’ve heard this story so many times from friends and family, to the point where all these athletes must be going Division I. Aside from the reality that most athletes won’t even participate in their sport after high school, these guys’ claim is also just a blatant excuse to run off with a new girl into the sunset. At least until they repeat the cycle, and suddenly need to “focus on their sport” once again.
Now, I’m not saying someone can’t practice dedication to their athletic endeavors. It’s perfectly normal to want to excel in a sport they’ve been doing for a long time, or even just started. So if that’s not the problem, then what is?
Maybe it’s the fact that this excuse is one, overused, two, untrue or three, unlikely. Plus, there is a thing called multitasking, which everyone has to do at some point in their life. Quitting one relationship after another for the sake of one more extracurricular? It just doesn’t add up, especially since less than two percent of high school athletes go DI in their sport. If you think about it, that means only one out of 57 people will end up going DI at college. So really, how focused is that imaginary man on his sport, if he will most likely just end up leaving those athletic dreams behind like the girl he dumped?
If this line was used truly, only one out of 57 girls would get their heart broken over some man who fantasizes about going to college for a DI sport. It’s even more extreme in hyper-competitive sports like basketball, where only one percent of high-school players go DI. So it’s unlikely for any player to be so focused that he can’t balance a sport with a relationship.
Most of the time, after a girl has accepted this excuse, she sees that same ex in the talking stage with someone else the week after. So, to all the guys this pertains to, are you really focusing on your sport, or is it simply about the fact that you don’t want to be tied down? Quite frankly, an athlete can “like” whoever they want, but it’s better to admit the real truth when you want to break it off, rather than leaving your aloofness up to interpretation.
The real problem with the athletic excuse is that it shows people are having a hard time taking accountability with their actions, especially when they have a seemingly perfect excuse of a time-consuming sport activity to use as a scapegoat. A sport is not an acceptable fallback for breaking someone’s heart, and the line is becoming so redundant that we all know it’s a lie at this point. So instead of repeating the cliche, or some variant of it, maybe athletes should start expressing their true intentions right off the bat.
