This is a college football website, so Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver blaming his NBA franchise’s woes on “millennial culture” seems a bit out of place here.
And, because this is a college football website, I’ll refrain from harping on how Robert Sarver’s failed tenure heading the Suns is a disaster, bound for its sixth consecutive season without a playoff appearance — the worst such run in the organization’s 47-year history. I also won’t dedicate much bandwidth to Sarver leading the 2011 NBA lockout, which threatened to cancel an entire season.
There are places more suited to such topics than CFB Huddle. But, since this is a college football site, I deal extensively in covering college football players, who happen to be millennials. I have seen more than a handful of examples who completely eviscerate Robert Sarver’s lazy attempts to deflect blame for his own (repeated) missteps as an owner.
When Robert Sarver blames millennial culture and an inability to address setbacks for on-court failure, I think of Bram Kohlhausen.
On Saturday night, while a Sacramento Kings team (with a roster full of millennials) routed Sarver’s Suns, Kohlhausen led TCU to a 31-point comeback in the Horned Frogs’ Alamo Bowl defeat of Oregon. Kohlhausen, a walk-on, was thrust into the lineup when Trevone Boykin was suspended just one day earlier.
Kohlhausen lost his father in November, and the quarterback honored his dad’s memory in the postgame celebration.
Kohlhausen’s is just one performance among dozens that expose the ignorance of Sarver’s sentiment. And it goes well beyond the playing field, too. I think of former USC running back Buck Allen, whom I had the privilege of covering for a season.
Allen scored his first career NFL touchdown last month, and commemorated the occasion with a tribute to a lost friend. For Allen to reach the NFL, he had to overcome setbacks as minor as his place on the depth chart, where he opened his breakout, 2013 season fourth among USC running backs. He also had to overcome much more serious challenges, like growing up in rough neighborhoods that claimed some of his contemporaries.
Before taking the field with the Baltimore Ravens, Allen graduated from USC to culminate years of overcoming adversity.
There are countless other examples, in sports and in other other avenues of society, as well.
Millennials aren’t exactly the first generation blamed for…well, everything by their older counterparts. Lamenting the future because of “kids these ages” has endured the test of time — so much so, I’m sure cave paintings exist in which Neanderthals blame the world’s ills on the Cro-Magnons.
However, in the Information Age, it’s easy for the Robert Sarvers of the world to pass blame and the message to gain an audience. Conversely, the channels are wide open for others to tell Sarver and his ilk just how wrong they are — channels that include college football sites.
Damn millennials and their technology.
