Zach Moore's Outliers response

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers offers a very interesting perspective into the topic of success. Gladwell states that while most people only take into account things such as background, economical status, and luck when evaluating how a person became successful, his book takes an entirely different approach. In the first chapter of Outliers he mentions how many successful people are separated from their "less talented" peers at a young age simply because of the month in which they were born; he is not saying that they were favored because of when they were born but because they were bigger and more mature. He uses different sports and sporting leagues to show this difference. One main example that Gladwell uses is the Canadian Hockey League, one the finest junior hockey leagues on the planet. In the Canadian Hockey League, the age-class cutoff is January 1st. At a young age, a couple months in age difference can have a huge effect; the older child will most likely be bigger, stronger, and more mature than their younger peers. This means that these kids are more heavily scouted than the rest. This leads to them having better coaching and having more opportunities to practice. These advantages eventually lead to them becoming more highly skilled than their counterparts. Gladwell states that these opportunities are what make these kids better athletes; however, he leaves out on crucial point. This point is that some people are just naturally more gifted and fit to do some things than others. Some major examples of this are NBA players. The average height of an NBA player is around six feet seven inches tall, yet the average height for an American male is only five feet ten inches tall. This means that many NBA players are born about a foot taller than the average American male. This has nothing to do with when they were born, how much they practiced, or anything like that. Their natural born height was enough of an advantage to lead them to success.