"aah, he throws like a 13 yr old....????..oh wait"
Well maybe USC will be off probation by then.
This is pathetic. The kid’s parents as well as the coach ought to be given a psychiatric evaluation. Football is a SPORT. it is not meaningful beyond college. It is a sport that teaches teamwork, the value of hard work/practice, and strategy. but only so that those lessons can be applied to real life challenges. and in my opinion, no kid should be recruited or be asked to commit to play college football at age 13, even if he wants to (and who wouldn’t?). just my two cents.
Better odds?: This kid as starting QB for USC or Lane Kiffen as his coach there.
Oh no not another Todd Marinovich
...could very well be in violation of NCAA rules. Best he keeps his mouth shut!
A different sport, but the cautionary tale of Freddy Adu comes to mind.
"aah, he throws like a 13 yr old....????..oh wait"
Our family is going through the recruiting thing right now with our oldest son who is a Junior in H.S. this year. A PAC-10 school is recruiting him pretty hard as a right handed pitcher but they are very careful with their contact methods because of all the NCAA rules. At this point, emailing is wide open but no texting is allowed. We can call them but they have to answer the phone because if we leave a message and they call us back, that is a violation because it is construed as initiating contact. My son has went to 2 of their camps and taken a athletic facilities tour (unofficial visit). He will be going back to the campus later this month for another unofficial visit. Full contact between him and the coaches cannot take place until July 1st of this year which is probably a spring season NCAA imposed date. His early signing period will be sometime the 1st of November.
I was talking with his H.S. coach and he basically said that any verbal intent or written intent is just that....INTENT. If you want to change your mind, you can. Look at the Kiffen situation at Tennessee when he told the athletes not to go to class so you can transfer if you want. That sounds like the actual “decision” isn’t made until you attend the first day of classes.
There are a few ways you can be recruited before your Senior year. First is you can just make a phone call to the coach and hope they pick up. LOL! Second, you can email them or write them and tell them you are interested in their school and they can reply to the “written” initiated correspondence. Third, you show up to one of their “public” camps and the coach will see you, talk to you, and make it clear that you need to continue to initiate contact. They will be prepared at any time to take your “verbal commitment” and that is usually after an offer has been made to you by the coach for some athletic/academic scholarship money and a roster spot.
In my opinion, 13 years old is WAY TOO YOUNG for a player to commit or a school to commit to the player. This may not be as true in football as it is in baseball. A LOT changes in a baseball player between 13 and 17/18 years old.
Michelle Wie syndrome.
USC needs to recruit junior high school players, because USC will be past its impending probation by the time the youngsters matriculate.
Yogi Berra said it best, “A verbal commitment isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”
If someone is a violin virtuoso people think nothing of them saying at a young age, "I'm going to Juliard." It's encouraged.
But when it's about playing football, it's national news.