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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > February > 09
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Pulling a fast one on big college sports
I kind of feel sorry for this kid, but he created one heck of a stir that exposed the farce of the college football recruiting process in a pretty humorous way.
A mediocre (but very big) high school football player in Reno, Nev., named Kevin Hart so badly wanted to play major college football that, over the course of several months, he conjured up a fantasy that he was actually being recruited by some of the nation’s top football programs.
And here’s the amazing part — everybody bought it! His coach believed him, his friends and classmates believed him. The principal and school district did too. In fact, the school held one of these showcase press conferences to celebrate the final choice of what they thought was going to be the school’s first major college football recruit.
Students packed the gym Wednesday and local media covered the event as he placed two hats — one for Cal and one for Oregon — on a table and picked the Cal hat. The crowd went wild. Coaches and friends hugged him. The media interviewed him.
There’s just one problem. Not a word of this was true. Hart made the whole thing up.
He had never been contacted, much less recruited, by any of the schools he claimed were after him. Things began to unravel on Internet discussion board where amateur “experts” follow recruiting. They began asking questions about this unknown recruit and eventually the colleges denied any involvement. Eventually, Hart admitted he just wanted to play college football so bad that he spun a story that went out of control.
Wednesday was the first day of the college football “signing period,” during which recruits can formally sign binding letters of intent to attend their schools of choice. It has become a circus. High school kids hold huge press conferences and colleges make media events out of tracking the commitments coming in. Millions of fans watch the process online. It is completely crazy.
Hart’s school apparently wanted so badly the noteriety of sending a kid to a big time football program that nobody asked any hard questions. How could the kid’s coach not have figured this out? Would Cal recruit one of his players without ever talking to him? Where were the kid’s parents? Didn’t any of the reporters covering this bother to call the colleges? It is incredible that not one adult figued this out before it became a national joke.
Again, I feel sort of sorry for a kid who so badly wanted to be a football star that he fooled himself into believing he could just will it to be true. He needs help. It’s a shame none of the adults around him recognized that need in their haste to hitch their own wagons to what they thought was a college sports gravy train.
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