Posted on 06/30/2009 1:51:29 PM PDT by N3WBI3
Rivals has an article about a thirteen year old accepting a scholarship from Tennessee. Lets reiterate that Tennessee just offered a college football scholarship to a kid who probably has not finished putting all of his eighth grade trip pictures on his face book account. A kid three years away from legally learning to drive, a kid who has probably not looked at any aspect of college other than the fact his big brother is a star with the Volunteers..
The NCAA has more rules, regulations, and bylaws than some nation have in their tax codes so how about one more; No more recruiting kids who are less than 18 months away from graduation. You can't stop private organizations from scouting, profiling, and profiting off of high school football but you can keep universities from enabling the process.
Continued on MAC-Smack
ping
That’s been the thing with “studs” recently. NCAA rules affect the kid as soon as he hits 9th grade (# of contacts, etc.)
It’s the wild west for coaches and junior high schoolers.
They DID NOT offer him a scholarship. He just committed to going there. He has plenty of time to change his mind, too.
“Evan Berry has decided to follow in the footsteps of his brother and father after accepting a verbal scholarship offer to play for the Volunteers and coach Lane Kiffin.”
http://www.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=960207
I wonder what the minimum age for signing a LOI is?
I see no issue. It’s not like basketball where the kid can sign an LOI in the 9th grade. He still won’t sign until february of 2014. Beyond that the kid is a legacy and has a twin brother who will likely sign too. Finally if anything this will make the Berry’s life that much easier when their junior and senior years come. One of the toughest things they go through is the reruiting process and juggling trips with school and sports and having to rifle through dozens of communications a week.
If he played QB, he’d already be an improvement over their current QB.
I know its still a walk away move but its completely unethical for the school to do this and unhealthy for the father to allow it..
The fathers kid so nobody but he and the kid have a say, no matter how unhealthy... but the school? come on..
Don’t know about age but I do know he can’t sign the LOI until his senior year and only after february of that year.
No scholarship was offered. The kid just committed on his own.
http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2009/jun/29/berrys-brother-13-picks-vols/?partner=RSS
“http://www.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=960207";
The twin brother is looking at LSU, boy wont thanksgiving be fun ;)..
The offer is provisional on the person enrolling at Tennessee at some point in the future. It’s really meaningless. There’s no formal process for extending an offer, a coach can call up and say “we have a scholarship for you when you enroll”. The school doesn’t even have to honor the offer (although if they get the reputation for revoking offers they’ll have trouble recruiting in the future).
Tennessee, or any school, can offer as many scholarships as they want, to anyone they want, but they can’t enroll more than 25 scholarship players in any one year.
When Tim Tebow has a kid, I hope Florida gets his commitment. ;)
this is the problem with all these blogs. they aren’t hampered by facts. they just write whatever they want and people read them and take their word on it.
Thanks, somebody should let rivals know...
Oh they know. They were lambasted about it after Jaime Newburg stickied it in the main recruiting forum. The thread grew out of hand fast so it was pulled and deleted. Surprised it hasn’t been corrected yet.
It looks like corrections are starting to get out there.
This is not specifically a blog problem but an ‘instant’ news problem. If a blogger sees something said as fact on a half dozen or so reputable sites (like Rivals, Scout, ..., ...) they are going to assume its pretty much true
This sucks. Probably just a lot false hope for the kid and the parents.
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