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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 > Entry
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.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Sports and Athletics
Comments
By Unbelievable
February 10, 2008 3:40 PM | Link to this
This sounds like the plot to a teen novel! My guess is someone will probably swoop in now and offer him some kind of scholarship. Probably not to Cal, but you have to admire the kid’s pluck. I probably would have folded the tent long before the press convference. In defense of the media, contacting the colleges would have been a waste of time. NCAA rules forbid colleges from discussing recruits until after they sign.By Mary
February 9, 2008 2:36 PM | Link to this
Interesting you should bring this up. I had noticed it in the Dayton Daily News and/or USA Today and had even clipped the article(s). I thought it important because it showed how the obsessions of administrators, college trustees,and school boards over sports in the school and college environment is mirrored by students. It is a psychological and socialization issue, and not a genuinely naturally occuring human obsession. At my son’s high school graduation a few years ago, the acting principal, a former coach, spent a lot of time in the ceremony fawning over a stand out female athlete who had an athletic scholarship to a prestigious school. She was not a top student from what I could tell. In the past few weeks, the same district and the Dayton Daily News have fawned over the OSU football coach’s visit to our disrict to bestow an athletic scholarship to the son of another college football player who probably also did not have to pay for college or the big time sports he participated in. A fawning mayor and fawning school board members were in attendance for mass fawning over sports at school. I think overall, the media is part of the problem. Yesterday’s Dayton Daily News hyped about the revenues of Miami University’s hockey and new $36 million arena, but not about who is really paying for all of this. College spending is outpacing inflation and big time college sports is the biggest spender. Even by their own biased accounting, very few athletics departments break even. The media should be explaining this better to the public instead of simply jumping on the bandwagon with the other obsessed fools running our education system, the students and their future into the ground through sports and athletic hysteria spawned by education and political leaders.By calvin
February 9, 2008 2:12 PM | Link to this
The district attorney is looking into “it”? What? The usual type of hype made over athletes instead of academics in high school? The DA should look into the usual spending and waste of collegiate education funds on recruiting and special treatment for athletes. I think this is hilarious!