Wanted: Families on the path to college sports

I've begun work on a second book on the business of youth sports. I'll be exploring ways in which the commerce side of things is shaping the experience that kids are having.

I have some interesting stuff in my notebook and some promising reporting trips planned over the next few months. If you have suggestions, comments, thoughts on the subject, I'd be happy to hear from you.

One thing I plan to examine in the book is the (surprisingly) complex process of helping a child reach his/her goal of becoming a college athlete - combines, placement services, etc.

My thought is to choose two or three families that I would stay in touch with through a recruiting season. In the book, I'd write about the choices they faced and decisions they made.

So I'm asking readers of the blog for help. If you know a family that might be interesting to follow, drop me a note here. I'll supply more details about what would be involved.

Many thanks, Mark

NCAA draws the line at the eighth grade

News item:

"Under a new recruiting rule adopted this week, male basketball players in the seventh and eighth grades are now defined as prospective athletes, a move designed to prevent overeager college coaches from recruiting them," reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

This is a classic good news/bad news. The bad, of course, is that the NCAA needs to expand the rulebook to prevent college coaches, sports-minded alumni, and others from mining 13-year-olds. The good is that the NCAA finally is acknowledging that the recruiting wars begin that early, amazing as that may be. All the abuses/excesses/distortions that we've come to expect of blue-chip high school athletes are occurring - not in rampant fashion, but frequently enough - in, yes, middle schools.

We've commented on the problem before in this space. And I recently had an interesting conversation with someone who deals with dozens of high school athletes every day. He told me some hard-to-believe stories of eighth graders committing, unofficially, to college programs before they've dressed for a single high school game, much less proven themselves at that level or the next.

One (among many) negative effects is that these kids totally lose focus. They've reached the ultimate goal - to catch the eye of a college coach - set by their parents, club coaches and others, so what's left to prove? My friend tells me these kids often kind of sleep walk through their high school sports lives, convinced that they already have the talent, skills and a guaranteed future. Perfectly understandable.

Does the NCAA need to extend its no-recruiting-eighth-graders zone beyond basketball, to football and even women's lacrosse? From what I hear, absolutely.

Recruiting stuff you couldn't make up

Josh Barr of the Washington Post has a wonderful piece (in a disturbing sort of way) on middle school football players and how some are selling themselves to top high school coaches. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Bill McGregor, football coach at DeMatha High School, a prep football power in suburban D.C., tells of speaking at a youth clinic and, days later, receiving DVDs from two seventh-graders interested in playing for DeMatha. McGregor laughs with the reporter as he recalls another kid, an eighth-grader, making a formal announcement that he's "committing" to play football for McGregor. As if he were a blue-chip high school senior committing to Oklahoma.

Barr writes: " "What are you committing to?" McGregor replied, retelling the story and chuckling at the thought that a middle schooler considered his future plans so noteworthy."

The Post story makes the point that public high schools refrain from recruiting middle school kids - openly, at least - because they can't. Such activity is banned by almost all state scholastic athletic associations. Private schools operate with far fewer controls. And so we have 12-year-olds showcasing their skills on DVD.

The behavior of the kids is curious and excessive, of course. But, as we know, this isn't a kid problem. It's a problem created (and perpetuated) by adults - coaches, athletic directors, parents, sanctimonious journalists.

Today's naive question: If we agree the system makes no sense - who's arguing this stuff is in the interest of adolescent boys? - why does it persist?

The college scholarship dream

Grooming a child to play college sports - and earn a full athletic scholarship - is a highly dubious proposition. Shall we review a few of the reasons? Kids who start in sports too early and train too hard are candidates for burnout and overuse injuries. The commitment in time and money - to pay for private lessons, travel squads, summer sports camps and the like - is startling. (See Monday's blog post). Even gifted athletes are prohibitive long shots to pay their way through college with their sports talent. Just one in 100 high school athletes succeeds.

These points and other good ones are made in an excellent three-part series in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The series started Monday with an installment on how elusive athletic scholarships truly have become - answer, very. I'm especially interested in the final installment in today's newspaper explaining the steps taken - and, often, money blown - by parents promoting their teen athletes to college coaches. I confess to having spent far more than was necessary or prudent on just this sort of thing. Anyone interested in a private screening of a professionally produced video: "My older son, the baseball catcher, blocking balls in the dirt"?

Here's a link to Part One. From this page, you'll be able to access the entire package of articles and charts.

Thanks to Lee Engfer, our Twin Cities eyes and ears, for passing along the articles.