Well folks, college basketball is back! This week we had the pleasure of watching top 25 teams in exotic locations celebrate wins against the likes of Coastal Carolina, Chaminade, Morehead State, Austin Peay, Texas A&M-CC, USC-Upstate (a real school in beautiful upstate South Carolina), my favorite, the Hawks of Maryland-Eastern Shore (not to be confused with the Eastern Shore Higher Education Center), High Point, and The Mississippi Institute of Fan Belts and Air Conditioning (I only made one of those up).
With the return of college basketball comes two very important moments in my life.
(1) the return to consistent blogging (I know how much you blog readers have missed me!), and
(2) my continued review of all things recruiting class related.
Now, while I enjoy the blogging, the excuse to review all things NCAA Basketball, and the thought of writing running blog posts from my couch while taking off two days of work to watch every game of the opening round of the Tourney, the second event brings about a certain amount of self loathing. Sound crazy? Well its not. Let me explain.
After waking up and checking emails overnight, I fire up the old interweb and pull open the Georgetown page on ESPN (a buddy had sent me a link to an article that graded the early recruiting classes of all of the Big East schools that I had somehow missed). Like a kid running down the stairs to open my presents on Christmas, I click on the link and am dismayed to see that St. John's (A+), Louisville (A), Syracuse (A), and RUTGERS (A) (WTF?) have higher grades than my beloved Hoyas (A-).
After getting over this initial shock (and effective ruin of my morning), I decided to learn a little bit more about the players that we signed to make millions of dollars for the university as "student athletes." First I read about Mikael Hopkins (95 rating), a 6'8" center who has terrific upside, but needs to work on his court energy. Then, I marveled at the potential of watching Jabril Trawick (93 rating) becoming a dangerous wing, but found myself concerned about his reportedly flat jumper. Finally, I thought ... I hope that Tyler Adam's (91 rating) knee holds up and he can stay in shape!
Forty minutes later, after having my day ruined, and then reading about players who are 17 years old and have yet to step foot on campus as students, I was done. Strangely though, I didn't feel excited about the future, or happy about G-town's 5-0 start. Instead, I felt kind of bad. I started questioning whether it was wrong for me, an almost 30 year old man, to be so incredibly obsessed with a 17 year old's jump shot.
Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that all sports, but especially basketball, are young person's games. I fully appreciate that just because you get older you don't stop being a fan. At the same time though, I realized that for all the conversations I have where I advocate for paying players, and treating them as athlete students rather than student athletes, I am part of the problem. I see these kids not as young men who are building for the future, but rather as parts in the machine that will power my favorite college basketball team. Finally, I had to face the fact that rather than play with my dogs, I read about college recruiting. Then...I start to self loath just a little.
With that being said, I really do hope that Tyler's knee can hold up!
Thoughts?
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