Austin, I don't disagree with anything you've said but I think that physical compentancies are a very important component of quality of life. I'm not saying they are more or less important than academics - I don't think you can compare the two. But I think that the returns to a child from sports don't begin to diminish until they've reached a very high level.
I believe that working hard and achieving at a high level at anything yields more benefits to a person's character than dotting the i's and crossing the t's and getting a B+ average.
Personally, I was an exceptionally BAD student but a very good athlete who worked hard at it. If I hadn't been an athlete I still would have been an exceptionally bad student. I think I would be in a very bad place today if I hadn't had the opportunity as a child to be an athlete. It taught me how to work hard and it exposed me to a caliber of peers that I would not have had otherwise.
And don't even get me started on the obesity epidemic....
