Todd Harris Embodies Everything Wrong with Recruiting

There it was. The scene was set. Todd Harris, a top 75 recruit in the nation according to 247sports.com, had announced via twitter that he was going to announce his commitment.

Would his commitment have made a big a splash if he had chosen one of the 3 hats on the table? Probably not, but I guarantee you that everyone following the recruiting classes of Alabama, LSU and Ole Miss were dialed in, waiting on his announcement. Well, they didn’t exactly get what they were looking for in the end.

In a move that will surely be praised by his high school coach, Harris announced his commitment to his high school. That is right. He held a press conference to announce he was committed to Plaquemine High School.

Part of me wants to praise the kid. I’ve never been huge into following recruiting classes until a kid has completed his senior year, and is enrolled into classes. Then I’ll go back and look at his ratings, how he fits in, and all the other stuff that others have been hanging on for the past few years.

I’m sure I may be in the minority, but I swear that all these recruiting storylines are like soap operas for men. Lies, scandals and backstabbing are all the ideas driven behind the headlines as kids flip-flop on schools, flash instagram photos of cash, and constantly end up in the headlines for run-ins with the law. We bash them and expect them to act like adults when we are talking about kids barely old enough to drive, and most not even old enough to vote.

Then we get mad when a kid pulls something like this. The only person we should be mad at is ourselves.

Now, the whole thing just irks me to no end, and I’m not talking about because he fooled a couple of people and wasted reporters’ time on this Sunday afternoon.

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It has much more to do with that us as a whole, we have made these kids entitled to this kind of attention. What irks me the most is that even by writing this I’m adding to the attention.

How do we break this cycle?

I think the NCAA needs to stop worrying about television money and wipe this whole signing day thing out. You talk about “players being exploited” by playing a game that makes millions of dollars for a school that goes to funding for the school to help with the education of everyone else that attends that campus. But, we’ll willingly throw a microphone in a kid’s face and give him the camera time he wants before he even plays a high school football game as a senior in high school. Who’s getting paid for that?

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As the twitter world continues to blow up with praises for getting back at the system, and condescending remarks saying that Todd Harris doesn’t take the recruiting process seriously enough, I’ll continue to sit in my chair and just shake my head. He’s 17 years old guys. He’s 17.