A small sign that THE APOCALYPSE IS NOW UPON US: 7th grade, quarterback phenomenon, David Sills from Bear, Delaware has recently given a verbal commitment to new USC head football coach, Lane Kiffin. This will mean that when young David is old enough, he’ll head off to college to play football with a full scholarship in hand! Perhaps he’ll also go to college while he’s there.
There’s something completely absurd about this one!!! No offense to David who has always dreamed about playing ball for USC ever since he was young. The kid is supposedly the next big thing in football quarterbacks, so more power to him! But the fact that college coaches are now calling up 7th graders and signing them is just a tad bit premature and way whacked. To me, it just shows how far off track we’ve actually wandered.
What’s next? Will we hear some stories of signing kids right out of first grade or Kindergarten? Or maybe we can find a toddler who looks good for the class of 2026?
Now, enthusiastic athletic parents will see the opportunity in starting their kids off even earlier. So many parents have already crossed the line in pushing their athletic offspring to the detriment of their children’s long term emotional and physical well being. Now they’re getting blatant encouragement from the likes of Coach Kiffin to continue to do so.
It’s one thing to have college coaches sniffing around high schools for talented freshmen and sophomores. It’s a completely different thing to have them hanging out in middle school and elementary school parking lots looking for and ranking the next great recruit!
All of this mess is a cousin to what’s going on with these D-! colleges and their athletic pay scales. An alarming number of these coaches have scored multimillion dollar contracts while tenured professors in these same fine institutions, that’s TENURED, are lucky to make 6 figures a year. Nothing wrong with our priorities here! After all, everyone knows that the main purpose of college is for training semi-professional athletes!
