Received a thoughtful and compelling email today from one of my closest lifelong friends.
Fritz and I played junior and senior league baseball together, and we were teammates in football from eighth grade through high school. He was a great player on a great team. I was good, but not great.
He sent me a Wall Street Journal article dated June 27, written by Harriet Ryan, titled The Father Who Bankrolled a High School Football Team for His Son. I will link the article below. But in truth, one does not need to read it to recognize the deeper pathology it illustrates—a pathology that has spread well beyond sports and now permeates our broader culture: the worship of false ends.
In earlier writings, I have argued that before undertaking any serious endeavor—whether building a business, forming a family, or leading an organization—three fundamental questions must be answered: What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? And most importantly, why are we going to do it? The “why” is always paramount, because it governs and gives meaning to both the “what” and the “how.”
Consider a simple example. Suppose someone starts a carpet cleaning business with the sole aim of making money. That enterprise is likely to fail. Why? Because profit is not a starting point—it is a byproduct. One must first develop a quality service, execute effectively, and meet customer needs. Only then does financial success follow. Without a grounding purpose rooted in competence and service, the business collapses under its own shallowness.
The same principle applies to family life. If a man marries in order to acquire a “trophy wife” or a social accessory for professional appearances, he has already undermined the foundation of that marriage. The purpose is disordered from the outset
On every team Fritz and I played for; the emphasis was never explicitly on winning. Our pregame prayer included the line: “We ask that we may be able to do our best, and that our success will be in proportion to the effort we put forth.” There was no fixation on outcomes. The focus was always on execution—on each individual play, on discipline, on effort. Winning was understood as the natural result of doing things the right way, not as the objective itself.
The article Fritz shared presents a stark contrast. A father, burdened by guilt over lost time with his 12-year-old son, attempts to compensate by injecting millions of dollars into a small Christian school in Orlando, Florida. His aim is singular: to build a championship football team around his son.
To accomplish this, he recruits top-tier athletes—many of whom cannot meet the school’s academic standards—and pays their $28,000 tuition. He finances new facilities, including a stadium and training complex. He even establishes an auxiliary off-campus program where players can be “homeschooled” under a more permissive academic structure.
The result, in the short term, is predictable: a 9–1 season and a playoff appearance within two years. But the foundation is hollow. A whistleblower triggers an investigation by the Florida High School Athletic Association, and the team is forced to forfeit its season.
The real cost, however, is borne by the players. A few—three, according to reports—advance to college programs, where the same dynamics of exploitation are likely to persist. The rest are left adrift, lacking both academic preparation and practical life skills.
This is not an isolated issue. It reflects a broader systemic failure. Consider the numbers. Out of roughly one million high school football players nationwide, only about 70,000 to 80,000—roughly 7 to 8 percent—will play at the collegiate level. From there, only about 1,500 players make an NFL roster in any given year, or approximately 1 to 2 percent of college athletes. Even among those who reach the pinnacle, long-term stability is elusive: studies indicate that roughly one in six former NFL players will file for bankruptcy within a dozen years of retirement.
The overwhelming majority of these young men will never earn a living through football. Yet many are steered—by coaches, institutions, and even well-meaning benefactors—into a system that prioritizes performance over preparation, spectacle over substance.
So, we must ask: where is the “why”?
Milton Friedman once observed that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Nowhere is that more evident than in the world of amateur athletics. Offering scholarships without insisting on genuine academic engagement is no different than launching a business without a coherent purpose. It may appear generous, even noble—but it is ultimately destructive.
And this problem is not confined to sports.
Consider healthcare. Billions of dollars flow through Medicaid into large hospital systems and insurance companies, yet too often fail to reach the patients they are intended to serve. Or take the reported loss of $100 million in the Idaho Health Data Exchange. Where was the guiding purpose? Where was accountability? Who, exactly, is ensuring that the individual at the end of the pipeline is actually being helped?
Public education presents a similar pattern. Per-pupil spending has increased significantly over the past decade, even as student performance has stagnated. With fewer students and more resources, one would expect improvement. Instead, we see institutional expansion without corresponding outcomes. This raises an uncomfortable question: who is truly benefiting—the students, or the system itself?
Father Theodore Hesburgh, the longtime president of Notre Dame, once framed this issue with clarity: “If a football player comes to Notre Dame and does not graduate, we have used him. If he comes and graduates, he has used us.”
That distinction cuts to the heart of the matter.
The true value of education is not measured in the price of a scholarship, nor in the prestige of an athletic program. It lies in the formation of human capital—in equipping individuals with the skills, discipline, and judgment necessary to contribute meaningfully to society and to their families.
Likewise, the legitimacy of any government program should be judged by its ability to elevate individuals toward independence and self-sufficiency—not by how effectively it sustains bureaucracies or enriches administrators. When systems exist primarily to perpetuate themselves, they have lost their purpose.
Perhaps it is time to reconsider our priorities. If we are serious about outcomes, we might invest more in those directly responsible for education—teachers and professors—and less in the layers of administration and spectacle that surround them.
At every level—sports, education, healthcare, public policy—the same question persists.
Where is the why?
