8th grader commits to Kentucky...
 

Wow.

That is wrong in so many different ways.

What have we created in this country???:confused:

Right. This kid from SoCal ends up playing for some AAU coach in Indiana at a tourney where a D1 coach happens to be looking at other players. And the D1 coach is so impressed he offers him a scholarship.

Typical AAU/NCAA BS. The only question is how will the AAU coaches involved hide their payoff so it doesn't appear too obvious what actually went on.

And yes, it's pathetic this crap is reaching down to the 8th grade.

Anybody else think it's going to be hard for this kid to concentrate on his studies in HS?

"Gee, Mom, I can't do my homework, I have to practice my jump shot or else Kentucky might change their minds."

Or worse yet - "Michael, forget the homework, go practice your jump shot. Do you want to blow your scholarship? What's wrong with you?"

This is wrong on so many levels.

Hey..it's the times we live in. If the kid can get his education paid for, I'm all for it. You use the game, not the other way around. Sure, a lot can happen in 4 years but if they put the offer on the table and he can sign it...DO IT!

And if he turns out to be a marginal player, well....he still has that education! ;)

Edited for: I do think it's crazy but it is what it is...take the money and run!

Why dies he have to study if he's going to Kentucky?:confused:

That is garbage. It's not the "times we live in" - it's the climate we have allowed to develop where little Johnny is a superstar because he's taller than all the other kids and can shoot/throw/pass/kick a stupid ball better than others. It's crap...

I do not like the fact that kids would subject themselves to that kind of decision this early. But who is going to stop him or his family making that decision? The coaches still cannot talk to the players at this stage. I know if I was that young and was a really good player, I probably would make a similar decision as to what school I was going to. Now it is up to the parents that help guide those decisions and show there kids the correct way. Now not all parents are capable to do that and most are completely uneducated about the process anyway and unless their parents are former players or current coaches, they might not really know what to do or what not to do in this situation. Bottom line is most parents would want their kid to get an education or an opportunity for an education.

Peace

Rocky....it's the same thing with drafting kids out of HS to the NBA...it's all based on POTENTIAL and really has nothing to do with actual ability anymore.

Sadly it's all become a business...right down to the 8th grade AAU level. I will never fault a kid for taking the opportunity to secure something for himself, be it a full ride scholarship or the multi-million dollar payday of professional sports. Look at Greg Oden...Do you think he didn't know about his knee problem when at OSU...if that were to come out before last year's draft, do you think he would have been picked where he was....Maybe with him, but a lot of other guys who had knee issues never made the guaranteed money of the first round.

Again...sign the LOI and scholly offer as fast as you can kid!

In that entire article, the word "education" was used once. It's not about an education and we all know that...

A "committment" to anything by 13-14 year boy is a oxymoron (or is it a conundrum?).

Is there anything that truly ties this kid to Kentucky?

Of course he's not actually getting an opportunity for a free education.

He's exchanging the promise of a LOT of hard and time consuming work for the chance to enroll for free at this institution. If the parents had thought through it at least as long as it took them to get the coaches phone number from the AAU coach they could have maybe realized this will not be the last chance the kid will have. And who knows...? maybe in 4 years the very last thing this kid will want to do is move from SoCal to Kentucky.

In short, it was a stupid, shortsighted decision to let the kid commit at this point.

I agree and you are missing my point....Let's say they were looking at him and 3 years from now the kid rips up his ACL/MCL/PCL, needs microfracture surgury or something.......do you think Gillespie is gonna say "Well kid, I've been watching you since 8th grade and you are a great kid and I know it's gonna take you 2 years to rehab, but I'm gonna give you a full ride anyway!"

HELL NO he's not.....

So IF the kid pans out and becomes a stud Gillespie looks like a helluva coach for "spotting" talent and maybe he goes on to BIG$ of pro ball..... If the kid shreds his knee....HE looks like a smart kid that took advantage of the system which is EXACTLY what he should do because the % chances of him getting a college education paid for and making it to guaranteed money to set him and his family up for life in 7 years don't come around often enough!

Man I would love to have you on the *other* side of the table in any business negotiations.

We must keep in mind that scholarships are not 4 year commitments. They really are 1 year commitments. And nothing really starts until a kid signs the Letter of Intent. Until the kid signs that letter and the school offers it to them, it really means nothing at this time. And nothing prevents a school from still recruiting this kid. Even when a kid signs a letter the school do not have to offer a scholarship.

Peace

What's next? College coaches visiting maternity wards to see which babies can dunk their pacifiers? :rolleyes:

Let's be serious. None of this would be happening if college sports didn't bring in huge amounts of revenue and the coaches weren't paid more than the teachers. If we want all this to go away, as a nation we should stop watching "amateur" sports on television. We created this "monster". It's just going to get more pervasive, not less.

Dan...Please expand...you obviously have an opinion about my stance on this...bring it forth...

Well Jeff, you are right, it means the signer must attend for 1 full acedemic year. It does not guarantee playing time or a spot on the team. But the signer can not be recruited by other schools who are part of the national letter of intent program.

So per the commitment he's locked in to his first year regardless of what happens unless he decides to go elsewhere and not play. Whether the school he commits to would make him honor that is not clear, given his age, but for certain he has reduced his options.

http://www.national-letter.org/faq/

Interesting discussion anyway, at least more interesting than reading about MTD's awful airborne shooter block/charge interpretaion, isn't it?

Very perceptive :)

This kid's father has jumped at the very first offer put on the table. Almost never the smart thing to do, especially if you're negotiating from a position of strength.

If I am not mistaken, he does not have to play at the school that he signed a Letter of Intent to. He could play a lower level college like a JUCO or D3 for that year if things do not work out. I am sure there are more restrictions, I am just not aware of them right now.

I do agree witih the other thread you are referring to. That is why I have stayed away.

Peace

True...there is obviously a lot more to this story that we don't know. Maybe (like Damon Bailey from Indiana who was only going one place- IU) this kid's short life dream is to play at UK? He's from SoCal..so maybe it's really UCLA?

IF he is everything he's being touted (which IS how it is today as Rocky argued with me)...then additional offers will plow in....

Again..I'm only trying to say he should use the system because we all know the system will use him...Why in the hell else would he get an offer in the
8th grade. That part IS crazy to me and it is the landscape of basketball these days as well as other sports.

This kid hasn't signed anything yet - and can't until his Senior year of High School. He has given and been given a verbal committment - which either side can walk away from (unlike the letter of intent) based on any number of reasons. So if the kid does shred his knee his Junior year, UK can still say "Gosh, you could have been great. Sorry." Or if the USC alumni offer a nicer SUV and free gas for three years, the kid can still say "See ya UK"...it's ridiculous all around. And again, there ain't nothing about this situation that has anything to do with the kid getting an education - which would be helpful just in case he does ever shred his knee.

I'm going back over to the LGP thread...:D

You really do not know that. I know if I was a certain kind of player in this day and age, I would have decided where I was going long before the Letter of Intent was signed. And my choice would have been supported by my parents because that is a place my parents attended and a couple of my siblings also attended. Unless you really know the kid's family or situation, you have no idea why he picked that school. It is possible that is the same place his parents attended or once lived.

I had a cousin that lived in Texas and went to FSU to play football. It was pretty obvious that he was going to FSU all the way (Texas was not very good either) because he had family that attended FSU and FAMU (in the same town). He was born in Florida and his father had an old class mate that that was an assistant coach on the FSU team at the time. If you did not know anything about the situation, you would wonder why he left Texas where he went to high school to attend a school in Florida. Of course his decision was not as early as 8th grade, but his decision was made with more factors as to just playing football.

Peace

Uhmmmm, did you read the article? You make some really nice points, but none of them fit this situation or what the father had to say in the article.

I did not read anything in the article that dismisses what I said. It did say he had a grandmother that lived in Indianapolis. And if you know anything about Indiana, there are people that have affection or interest in Kentucky basketball. Then again in this age of 300 games on TV in a month and satellite TV, I am sure kids today have affections for school and they have no direct ties to those schools by family members or where they live.

There were two kids recently that committed to Illinois as freshman. I am sure the only reason those decisions were made was because they lived in the State and got to watch Illini in the Final Four recently, with a lot of former IHSA players on the squad. Their decision was certainly controversial to many in this state, but if that is where they want to go, that is where they want to go.

Peace

Yes. The NBA (and its teams) do an enormous amount of testing before the draft. If there was something there that could have shown up on a physical exam or an MRI, they whould have found it. You think they'll make multi-million dollar investments without spending a few hundred for an MRI?

He can't....they're not recognized until sometime around the Junior year. All he can do at this point is verbal...and that is not binding in either direction.

Really?? He gets an offer from one of top all-time programs (certainly the top 4 and perhaps the top program) and he should hold out for a better opportunity?

Any kid would be stupid not to take an early offer from UK, UNC, Duke, Kansas, and sometimes UCLA. If the offer were from others, perhaps you're right, but not the perenniel powers.

Also, he's free to back out any time as it is since it is not a binding agreement. If he does so, so what, he moves on and there are no real repercussions. If UK backs out, they look like a bad guy. The kid is in a win-win situation.

Except you're dealing with a 13 or 14 yo kid who 4 years from now may decide he wants to go backback Alaska for a year with his gf, or join the peacecorps, or the Marine Corps, or maybe he wants to join a seminary or maybe that coach and program will hit the skids with who knows what kind of ncaa trouble, or maybe as I said earlier he'll just decide Kentucky is not a cool place to play ball afterall.

You think the pressure of being that 8th grader who committed won't impact what he thinks might be *his* options?

If your goal as a parent is to make a good deal for your 13 yo to be a pro basketball player then yeah it's a win-win.

OTOH if as a parent your goal is to help the kid realize that with his talents many other options exist.... I dunno Camron, you tell me what the role of a good parent should be? It's easy to say take the money and run. I guess.

and btw... do you think it's OK to tell your 13 yo he should *commit*, fully accepting that it's OK to back out of his *commitment* at any point he feels less than comfortable?

If all parties understand that this is what is actually being committed to, then yes. You've surrounded the word commit with asterisks, perhaps you should have used quotes. We're using a word with very permanent and settled connotations to describe a situation that is in reality a very distant and uncertain.

I agree with you 100%. 8th graders committing is pretty foolish. But do you thikn it was the same 30 years ago? Kids didn't sign that early, but athletes have always gotten away with things to stay eligible and in school...With the internet, it is just harder to hide the blatancy now.

Bad as it sounds, as long as an 8th grader stays eligible in HS and then at college, he's following the rules and meeting expectations. I think the high schools and colleges should be raising their standards and not allowing athletes to skirt requirements. But that'll never happen. :(

And under the "terms" of this sort of committment, all of those other options remain open.
It just might give him the peace and quiet (other schools usually leave players alone who have "committed") to actually consider what he'd really like to do with out constant and persistent badgering.

I have no problem with the kid committing. I see it as only benefitting the kid. He has all the same options that he had before but has one of his options in a place where he now has more leverage (they can't drop him without looking at least a little bad).

I think a good parent would be one to teach their kid to not be too greedy lest a good offer disappear.

A bird in the hand...


YES....if the definition of the commitment is understood. We all know the committment is more of a statement of intent (from both parties)...not a promise.

Wow. Sad, very sad. *Commitment* has been dumbed down (at least in big time sports) to mean something you think you might do until the next better offer comes along.

Definitions of commitment on the Web:

committedness: the trait of sincere and steadfast fixity of purpose; "a man of energy and commitment"

the act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action; "his long commitment to public service"; "they felt no loyalty to a losing team"

an engagement by contract involving financial obligation; "his business commitments took him to London"

I also found another interesting link to *commitment*

We don't accept applications. Only commitments.

Let's assume you have a 14 year old daughter.

Playboy offers her $1M to appear in the magazine on her 18th birthday.

Pretty good offer, no? Here, use my pen to sign the contract...

What if, instead of Playboy, it was my favorite mag, "Chicks And Ammo"? ;)

Let's assume you have a 14 year old daughter.

IBM offers her $1M to leave school on her 18th birthday.

Pretty good offer, no? Here, use my pen to sign the contract...

Apples and oranges. AFAIK, NCAA D1 schools don't pay their athletes to play. Sure, the athletes get a free education, but IBM would do that too with employee educational programs. I also don't think that IBM will offer $1M to a 14 year old. They would likely say "call us in 4 years", or "keep in contact with us every 6 months". Or, they would have the 14-year old work for them immediately, and have private tutoring for her HS diploma.

I live on the far northside of Indy and this has me cracking up because the HS that Greg Oden and Mike Conley went to on the north side of Indy (Lawrence North)...they won 3 state titles in a row with Greg and Mike from 2003-2006. They also won it back in '89 with another 7' player (Eric Montross) and they had a another 7' (John Stewart) who committed to UK in the mid 90's but died of heart arithmia during a sectional or regional game....

Anyway...Their HC (Jack Keefer) has been there for like 30 years and people around here are ALWAYS throwing the recruiting card out with this program because of all the talent that they "land".

So this kid has a grandparent that lives here eh...and they are trying to find a HS for him AND he played with the Indy Elite AAU team (which has ties to former and probably current LN players!) :D Let me keep an eye on this one! ;)

I might be wrong, but I think you're missing grunewar's point. He's only responding to Dan_ref's similar point. Dan seems to say that it would be terrible parenting to allow your daughter to sign a "future" contract with Playboy. But grunwar points out that it might not be terrible parenting if the "future" contract were with a more reputable, professional company like IBM.

A D1 college scholarship seems more like the IBM (reputable) offer than the Playboy offer. I think that was grunwar's point. I'm sure Dan_ref will tell you why I'm wrong. :)

You could be correct. I decided long ago that I wasn't reading all the posts in this thread.

It's clearly the off-season here in the forum! :D Some of the topics are silly.

See gurnewar's response.

If some 'reputable' company offers my daughter a 1-3yr/$1m contract at age 14, I'll recommend that she/we take it. The odds that ANY 14 year-old will ever do better in that small window of time are about the same as winning the lottery.