Age and experience no longer matters in sports

No matter what ends up happening in the World Series, experience never caught up with the Tampa Bay Rays. The pressures of September and October were right there and Upton and Longoria and Kazmir and the rest of ‘em met them head on. This season, age didn’t matter and let me tell you something, it might not matter ever again – in any pro sport.

That’s the feeling I got Saturday night as I watched Ohio State’s cocky superstar freshman Terrelle Pryor play flawless football for three quarters and almost upset one of the best teams in college football. Here was a kid, still in high school five months ago, that has had his every move followed for over a year now playing in front of 80,000 fans on primetime national television and handling himself like the senior he replaced a few weeks ago. His only mistake was trying to do too much; he fumbled while eyeing the end zone when he only needed a first down.

You can bet Pryor will be hardened by this experience and the constant scrutiny he’ll continue to receive before he ends up in the NFL three or four years from now. Think he’ll be ready for a wild card weekend in January? And that’s just football. In baseball and basketball, guys like Upton and Kazmir and of course, LeBron, were considered prodigies before they could even define prodigy. These players are already ranked with their peers by 11 years old. Imagine that, a kid not old enough to play on a big diamond getting called the next Ken Griffey Jr.

Late season pressure isn’t close to what some of the young Rays have faced. Upton and Kazmir represented their country before finishing high school. Today’s star high school athlete is playing for national championship in front hundreds of scouts every weekend in some AAU tournament. Longoria was on a national team in college and was the MVP of the Cape Cod League, the most prestigious summer league in the country.

Tampa Bay has followed a trend that was probably set by LeBron, who single-handedly led his team to the NBA playoffs at 20 years old. They weren’t going to collapse because they were too young to handle to veteran Red Sox or Yankees. 162 games are nothing when you probably played 250 a year from the time you were 16. Of course, a World Series, NBA Finals or a Super Bowl means a lot more than any youth championship. But the point is that young teams like the Rays and all the young athletes of today are facing a lot more pressure at a much younger age. Once they make it the pros, they are trying to prove themselves to whom, the media and the fans?

In high school and college, it’s about showing the people who really matter that you belong -the scouts.

You tell me who’s under more pressure.

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Random Rumblings: Time for the Rays to get serious

• Maybe, as SI’s John Heyman suggested on WFAN yesterday, the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t actually believe this would be their year. Maybe the team wasn’t prepared to negotiate deadline deals because it thought a .500 record was the ultimate goal in 2008.
  
  But now, everything has changed and the Rays need to make a move. The team is still in first place, two games ahead of the Red Sox and four in front of the Yankees, but it is in desperate need of a bat. The Rays have scored more than four runs in a game just three times since it completed a sweep of Kansas City on July 6.
  
  Jason Bay, a player I love, might be the guy the team is trying to trade for, but he isn’t the best player available. That honor goes to none other than Barry Bonds, the guy whose OBP last season was almost 100 points higher than anyone in the Rays lineup today.
  
  Even if Bonds has regressed, he is still going to be on base 40 percent of the time and will undoubtedly put butts in seats. And if you’re telling me he isn’t more valuable than any of the players the Rays currently stick at DH, you’re out of your mind.
  
  The Rays considered Bonds an option before the season; now it’s time to make the Home Run King a priority.
  
  
• The Angels had a perfect night in Boston, acquiring Mark Teixeira before its game and then watching John Lackey no-hit the Sox for 8 1/3 innings. Already a World Series favorite, the trade puts the Angels in a league of its own, far ahead of the Red Sox, who they seem to dominate every time they meet.
  
  
• ESPN ranked UConn Men’s Basketball the sixth best program of the last 20 years, which is a testament to how Coach Jim Calhoun transformed a regional program into a national brand. But you have to wonder if he is proud of the current state of the program.
  
  His players have had off the court problems dating back to the laptop incidents, which have resulted in a couple arrests and even more transfers. Most recently, he brought in Nate Miles, a red flag guy who took the spot of the academically ineligible Stanley Robinson.
  
  Calhoun is an old school guy and it seems like he has figured out in a hurry that you have to be willing to compromise integrity in order to remain sustainable as a big time basketball program. It will be interesting to see how much more of this he can take.
  
  
• I’m always amazed by the people who complain about the length of the baseball and basketball seasons. They’re almost always the same ones who get all jazzed up about who is going to report to football camp in July.

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Random Rumblings

• As nice as it has been to see the Tampa Bay Rays finally put a winning season together, any realist has proceeded with caution when it comes to talking about the team’s chances of winning the American League East. The consensus seems to be that we can start considering the Rays a realistic contender on Aug. 1, but wins in their next three games might help that label appear a month early.
  
  The team has won five of six to move into first place in the AL East and will host the second place Red Sox for a three game set starting tonight. For the Rays, you could make the argument that this is the most important series the franchise has ever played, as it will undoubtedly set the tone for the second half of the season.
  
  The interesting storyline that could emerge from this season is that if the Rays can take two of three or sweep, they’ll be a couple games up on both the Yankees and Red Sox, who begin a four game series on Friday. That would force both New York and Boston into the unlikely position of needing to tread water in a tough division just to remain in contention.
  
  No it’s not August yet, but the next eight days will tell us a lot about Tampa and the rest of AL East for that matter.
  
  
• By no means do I consider myself a traditionalist when it comes to sports, but thank god interleague play is over.
  
  
• SportsCenter should start showing more highlights from all the top European soccer leagues. There might be very few things as boring to watch as 90 minutes of soccer, but there is nothing more exciting than the one or two goals scored in that span.
  
  
• Is anyone else shocked about the lack of coverage surrounding Javon Walker’s situation?
  
  
• When Kevin Love is a top five pick, you have an extremely weak NBA draft.
  
  
• The two may have nothing to do with each other but the question needs to be posed anyway: If an 18 year old can’t achieve a qualifying SAT score to play college basketball, what makes anyone think he’s got the head on his shoulders to move to a foreign country for a year to play basketball?
  
  And how well will Brandon Jennings be treated if he comes in and treats every game like an AAU showcase?

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