Last week, one of college football’s most celebrated holidays took place as the top high school recruits in the country revealed to the nation what college they would be attending. ESPNU covered the events for 11 and a half hours providing analysis and live coverage of the press conferences. It’s a fun process, as players get publicity and fans get to be excited about how good their teams will be the next few years or in some cases, they get to be disappointed by how poorly their team’s coaches recruited. But, despite all of that, things have gotten a little out of hand.
It is no shocking revelation that the focus and pressure on young athletes has become overwhelming. There are websites devoted to figuring out who the best fifth- and sixth-grade players are in the country. Just last year, a 14-year-old quarterback committed to the University of Washington. We love to salivate over who the next big star will be, who will be the next Peyton Manning or Reggie Bush; the highly touted recruiting website Rivals even has a section on the pages of some recruits saying which player the recruit reminds them of the most.
It makes sense for people to get excited and worked up about recruiting. We want to know the unknown, to predict and get excited about the future. But, the position we put 18-year-old kids in as a result of these desires does not sit well with me. They are thrust into the spotlight, worshipped as the next big thing before they even step onto a college football practice field or put on a college football uniform. And then, we chastise them if they get big heads and wonder what went wrong if things do not work out and they do not live up to expectations.
And things do tend to go wrong a significant amount of the time. The Post and Courier of South Carolina conducted a study that showed that from 2006 to 2009, 42.3 percent of players in Rivals’ Top 100 recruits were “busts,” in that they failed to do any of the following: appear in 40 college games, start 20 games, or have what the article referred to as “an above average season.” Further, only about 14.1 percent became either first or second team All-Americans or first- or second-round draft picks.
If the numbers do not seem that low, take this into consideration: there are approximately 250,000 high school seniors who play football in the U.S., a huge group with lots of talent, and out of all those players, only 100 were chosen to be the next big stars. When less than 60 percent of those turn out to be promising, not just on the pro level, but on the college level, it should turn some heads. Some of these players have injuries that set back their careers, but most of them just turn out to be flat-out busts.
When that happens, I think it is important to look at the pressure these kids are put under as at least one of the major factors contributing to their poor play. Almost all of these players have been the best players on their teams and for the most part, the best players amongst any and all of their opponents. Then they get to college, and all the hype they have gotten makes them think that they will continue to be the best with relative ease. Many either do not realize or are not ready for the level of competition and as a result fail to realize their potential.
We need to limit the exposure and coverage high school recruits receive. I realize that such a task will be difficult, considering that fans love to know about the recruiting process. ESPN and other media sources make a ton of money covering recruiting and signing day, schools and coaches want to excite their fans and keep them interested so that they continue to spend money on tickets, memorabilia, etc., and many of the recruits want the attention.
I am all for the players and the fans having fun, but these decisions should not be covered nationally. You can keep the fun press conferences and silly hat game, but just have a couple of cameras and reporters from the local media there if anything. I understand that in today’s world, news will slip out in milliseconds via tweets or Facebook statuses and that major media outlets will cover the day because there is a high demand for such news. I just hope that even if the process is going to remain a circus, that it becomes a two-ring circus instead of remaining a three-ring one.
