Recruiting Gets Younger; NCAA Now Classifies Seventh-Graders as 'Prospects'

Society has tons of problems. One of them is that we pay athletes millions of dollars to play sports. This has resulted in an increasingly powerful amount of pressure being placed on our culture's youth to succeed and be recognized for their athletic endeavors at an earlier age than ever before.

And that pressure just got stronger. Because the NCAA, bastion of all things good and wonderful and pure and true about amateur athletics, has lowered the legal age with which a younger player can be classified as a "prospect." That's right. It's not just ninth-graders that can be courted by college coaches, now it's seventh- and eighth-graders too!

The organization voted Thursday to change the definition of a prospect from ninth grade to seventh grade - for men's basketball only - to nip a trend in which some college coaches were working at private, elite camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-graders. The NCAA couldn't regulate those camps because those youngsters fell below the current cutoff.

"It's a little scary only because - we talked about this - where does it stop?" said Joe D'Antonio, chairman of the 31-member Division I Legislative Council, which approved the change during a two-day meeting at the NCAA Convention. "The fact that we've got to this point is really just a sign of the times."

Indeed it is, Mr. D'Antonio, indeed it is. And those times are what we like to call "horribly sad." Of course, on the other hand, at least this move by the NCAA -- unlike refusing to adopt a playoff -- is designed to keep everything on the up and up, insomuch as no one wants college coaches holding private sessions with seventh-graders.

Via R at MPS