Let’s retrace a few steps in time not so long ago, when a young coach blazing a trail of self destruction decided what he was doing wasn’t crazy enough.
So why not make it brazenly bizarre?
That was Lane Kiffin, who still hadn’t even coached a down at USC, offering a scholarship to a seventh-grade quarterback from Delaware. Earlier this month, David Sills, that very dirty-blonde, mop-headed child of years past, signed with West Virginia.
No fanfare. No ESPN cameras. No three hats and a cloud of dust.
Just when you think the world of grown men following teenagers and “scouting” them could get no shadier; when the world of grown men using social media to harass teenagers when they don’t choose “their” team could get no creepier, I give you the latest from recruiting behemoth Rivals.com:
They’ve rated two sixth-graders.
At this point, I could feed the monster and detail the virtues of two children — because that’s what they are, people, children — and set the wheels in motion for grown men to begin arguing about where each will play college ball.
I could tell you about Steve Clarkson, the California quarterback guru whose annual camps teach kids from third to 12th grade. That’s right, third grade.
Don’t blame Clarkson. If there weren’t parents living vicariously through pre-pubescent sons, he wouldn’t be teaching them.
Because for every Matt Barkley, who started at legendary Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif., as a ninth grader and went on to a successful college career and to play in the NFL, there’s a Todd Marinovich. For every Tim Tebow, there’s a Rhett Bomar.
Like it or not — admit it or not — some young kids simply aren’t equipped to deal with adulation at such a young age. So what do they do? They glom onto a system that enables them from the earliest of ages, pushing them by and through until they’re adults and on their own at college and the next thing you know, they don’t think twice about walking away from a grocery store without paying for crab legs.
Or they’re on a dance floor at a local club and there’s no pause in taking a swing at a woman. Or they’re leaving a local bar and the idea of coldcocking another man when he’s not looking sounds doable.
There’s a reason poor player behavior is, far and away, the biggest issue on college football teams. Not alcohol or illegal drugs or performance enhancing drugs.
Not agents, not boosters, not even academic fraud. They all fall in line after the one thing that can infiltrate a program and infect everything it contacts.
What do we expect is going to happen when, as early as middle school, players have recruiting services touting their “talents” and college coaches are offering scholarships and the entire world seems like one comfy corner of bulletproof bliss?
That is, until they’re forced to leave the cocoon of their 5-star fiefdom where the real world awaits.
We build false heroes and enable them through a critical mental growth period of their lives, then put them on recruiting pedestals for a couple of years and give them stars and tell everyone that their State U. needs one more guy like Joe Football to win a championship.
All the while, we’re building this false sense of who and what they are, and what life will be like once they reach the pinnacle that is college football. It’s at this point where these same players, these young men who have been told they can do no wrong, are forced to sit down on national television with everyone watching and choose a school.
For the love of pigskin, the No. 1 recruit in the nation made his decision earlier this month while holding a doll he says he talks to.
And now we’re ranking sixth-graders.
Suddenly that Kiffin experiment of a few years ago doesn’t look so crazy after all.