From The Chicago Tribune
China now has 200 flag-football programs with 1,500 college-age coaches poised to open more. Then the league embarked on the search for China’s first NFL player.
As it turned out, the scouts benefited from China’s Soviet-style sports culture, in which a network of thousands of state-funded sports academies systematically identify promising young athletes as soon as they enter primary school. Indeed, it was the same system that spotted Yao Ming as a 5-7 3rd-grader and put him on an elite after-school basketball program. [Full Text]
