that marriage is mostly a detriment to these guys as it concerns their sports. No one is saying it is a detriment to their lives overall, just that it is a detriment to their athletic endeavors, and it is hard to argue otherwise. When you can spend the majority of your time as an athlete focusing on your sport then you are going to be better at it than someone who cannot put in that same amount of time because they have other things that require some of their time and focus. And of course having a family requires a lot of time and focus, as it should.

Now some guys are such freak athletes that they can still perform at a very high level, higher than even other athletes, even though they spend less time at it so it isn't as apparent that they may not be performing as at high a level as they would have been without being married, but those guys are rare.

Someone mentioned Takitaki and how marriage helped him athletically although I'm not sure that is exactly correct. What it did was helped him quit being such a knucklehead, and he was an extreme knucklehead for those first couple of years at BYU. But most guys aren't clown acts like he was that needed to have something else to straighten them out. Most of them are already doing things correctly and with discipline so the added focus of marriage doesn't straighten them out like it did with him, for them it is an added distraction from their athletics, another commitment and priority they didn't previously have to spend time on and focus on.