NFL
By: Brock Vierra
It’s official. Baby Gronk is headed to LSU. College Football’s next great player will spend his collegiate years in Baton Rouge. Wait what? To be fair, I didn’t know who or what Baby Gronk was until three days ago but what I’ve seen in the past 72 hours disgusts me. Who is Baby Gronk? Baby Gronk is a 10-year-old victim of his father’s twisted ambitions. A social media figure who “rizzed” up social media famous gymnast and current LSU Tiger Liv Dunne. So we basically have a situation where adults are projecting their fantasies onto the shoulders of someone who hasn’t even hit puberty yet and it is very disturbing. Let’s dive into it.
First, we must address the Liv Dunne situation. Now I have no criticisms of Dunne. She is a social media figure who participated in a social media post with another social media figure. What I am perplexed by is the number of people, more importantly, the number of grown men who have claimed that a 10-year-old was spitting game with a grown adult. Now, Liv Dunne is a very attractive lady whose athletic figure and blonde hair make her the stereotypical blonde bombshell. However, just because someone finds another person attractive doesn’t justify the lust and inappropriate comments she receives and now via their association with each other, both she and Baby Gronk are victims of the perverted minds that hide behind computer screens.
However, the biggest threat is the man in front of the screens. Baby Gronk’s father Jake San Miguel is a self-righteous, selfish, immature moron who has sacrificed the life of his son in pursuit of his own 15 minutes of fame. Without him, there’s no Baby Gronk. When San Miguel isn’t trying to get his son on Bussin with the Boys or filming another Tiktok, he’s controlling every second of his son’s life. He sets the schedule for when his son eats, trains, and fulfills his social media duties. He controls his diet stating that his son consumes a routine of salmon and brown rice and that he eats clean virtually every day. He goes on to say he had been training his son since he was six years old.
San Miguel has set his son up for guaranteed failure in life. Let’s say in a hypothetical world, Baby Gronk becomes the best high school player in the nation, goes to a Power 5 school, wins a National Championship, becomes a first-round pick in the NFL, has a Hall of Fame career with a couple of Super Bowls. Guess what? It’s gonna end. Football always ends and the worst part is except for the select few, none of us control when it’s over. San Miguel has wrapped his son’s identity into being a football player so much that there’s nothing else for him. No opportunity to explore other interests, no opportunity to grow into the person he is. He will have an identity crisis no matter what but it’s like he doesn’t care.
Who Is Baby Gronk
Do you know who would care? Marv Marinovich. During his 81 years of life, Marinovich revolutionized the strength and conditioning programs in the NFL and is one of the godfathers of improved player performance in football and athletics in general. I was first introduced to Marinovich when B.J. Penn went to work with him following his loss to Georges St. Pierre. As an MMA fan and a kid from Hawaii, B.J. Penn was everything. When Penn went to Marinovich, the proof was in the pudding that his method works. Penn dominated in his fights against Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez and lost his first fight after parting ways with Marinovich. However, in his pre-fight interviews, Marv continually expressed regret when it came to his son Todd.
Todd Marinovich is the son of Marv and the original “Baby Gronk.” Marv wanted his son to be the “perfect quarterback” and went about it with detailed instructions. His wife Trudi was restricted in her diet while pregnant with Todd. No salt or sugar was allowed to be consumed. Todd was fed only raw milk, veggies, and fruit as a baby and was restricted to sweets and salty foods growing up. He wasn’t even allowed to have cake at his friend’s birthday parties. He also trained every day and it paid off. Marinovich would commit to USC, won the 1990 Rose Bowl, and was a first-round pick. He also developed a drinking problem in high school, became addicted to marijuana, didn’t play a varsity high school, college, or pro game sober, became addicted to meth, repeatedly stated he didn’t want to be himself, flamed out of the NFL after two years and found himself in a multitude of legal issues.
The experiment had already failed and unfortunately, it will fail again. Now I am not a father and there are endless stories of fathers mentoring their children to succeed in athletics. The Mayweathers groomed Floyd Mayweather Jr to a 50-0 boxing record while becoming the most profitable fighter of all time. Tiger Woods’s father set the standard that became greatness. Lewis Hamilton’s father worked tirelessly to fund and run his son’s karting career and built the foundation that Hamilton’s seven F1 world titles sit on.
Serena and Venus Williams credit their success to their father Richard, their story being turned into an award-winning film. However, for every success, there are 25,000 failures, and all those fathers with success stories have one thing in common, they put their kids first. Now, if San Miguel was just about helping his son achieve success on the football field, I would judge his methods but it would be what it is. Instead, he’s using his son to live out his own athletic dreams while using him for financial gain and clout.
I am also a big believer that kids shouldn’t play tackle football till high school. It’s a vicious sport that leads to head trauma and a variety of injuries that limit a person’s life span and quality of said life. Now, I love football but we need to be honest and smart about the game. The issue I have with San Miguel is that if his son achieves the dreams of his father, more dads will follow in his footsteps, robbing their children of their childhoods. I am disgusted when I watch six-year-olds getting whacked in the legs with padded training equipment to work on balance when I know those legs are still growing. I’m tired of watching kids’ personal development be stunted in the pursuit of some dream they themselves do not have.
One day, Baby Gronk will burn out. He will rebel and it will not be good. Ask Tate Martell or Julian Newman about what happens when you get pushed too hard and at such a young age. However, if we left personal responsibilities of how to be proper parents to parents, we would have even more people with mommy and daddy issues in the world. This is about college football in general. High School recruiting is in national news and we’re having scouting departments evaluating middle schoolers.
We’re having youth coaches fighting other coaches and refs. Aqib Talib started a brawl with youth coaches that led to his brother shooting and killing another coach. What are we doing? More importantly, what are you doing? That’s right, I’m talking about everyone. I may be the most critical person around in the world of football but I never speak ill about high schoolers, kids who decommit from schools, or people that aren’t adults. I’ve watched grown men call Arch Manning such vile things because of his last name based on his high school tape.
Let kids be kids. If they play football because they want to, great! If they don’t want to play, don’t force them to play. Football is a game. It’s entertainment. It’s not life or death or at least it didn’t used to be. We got high schoolers talking about “dogging” someone, we got kids and coaches getting killed at games, and we got parents trying to be trainers and super agents. It’s enough. For Juan San Miguel, I ask you to please stop being whatever it is you are and just be a dad. Fathers of football players don’t change the world, dads do.
