Years from now, if we're fortunate, the names of Kevin Hart and Terrelle Pryor will stand as symbols of the time when the sporting world started to get a handle on high school sports in general and recruiting in particular.
More than likely, however, their names will serve as the markers for the point at which the whole thing began to careen out of recognition of anything that resembles normality.
For now, the hype surrounding Pryor, supposedly the nation's most sought-after high school football player, and the hoax attached to Hart, the offensive lineman from Nevada who concocted a story that he was turning down scholarship offers from four schools to accept one to California, seem like the next legs of a march down a pathetic road.
We've reached the point now at which a kid such as Pryor, a quarterback from a suburban Pittsburgh school, actually has to make an announcement to tell the world that he's not ready to choose among Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, and we're supposed to care.
Worse yet, we've reached the point at which a kid such as Hart, who has probably lived a life as a football player that many of his nonathlete classmates could only dream of, feels so compelled to play big-time college football that he has to pull a stunt that embarrasses himself and his family and might cost his coach his job.
It's tempting and accurate to pin the blame on television, and specifically cable sports outlets, for attempting to turn the first day of the February national signing period into a de facto early college stand-in for the NFL draft.
ESPN Radio host Ryen Russillo wasn't far off the mark Sunday when he said that if ESPN wanted to make something big, it could by lavishing attention on it. And, these days, if ESPN says the signing day is important, the rest of the sporting world has to follow.
What ESPN has done with its trumpeting of the first day of the signing period is force regional channels and competitors to trot out so-called recruiting "experts" to sit behind desks and convey "can't-miss" status onto kids whose college progress they can't possibly accurately forecast. In turn, the attention from Bristol, Conn., drags newspapers, such as this one, into the morass.
But this isn't exclusively the fault of "The Worldwide Leader." No, the fault lies within all of us for allowing the educational and recreational portions of high school athletics to be swallowed nearly whole by the mercenary parts of our nature.
