High School Recruiting

Probably the hottest topic in all of high school sports nowadays is recruiting. Not college coaches that are recruiting high school kids to come to their school, but high school coaches that are recruiting 8th graders to come to their high school. This is causing an unbalanced competition throughout the states, well at least my state of New Jersey. This has led to a frenzy among the state officials to change divisions and try to balance the power in each conference. This came about mainly because of one school's dominance in the area this decade; Don Bosco Prep.

Don Bosco Prep has been the most dominant force in all sports since about the turn of the millennium. The football team is ranked Nationally every year, and has not lost to a New Jersey team in almost 3 years. The basketball team has won the Bergen County Tournament 3 consecutive years. The baseball team went undefeated last year, and was ranked #1 Nationally by some magazines. The reason for this in my opinion, is the recruiting that is going on. I understand that a school can recruit itself, but when you have a baseball team that has 8 Division 1 players, when no other team in the county has more than 1 or 2, and a football team that consistently sends players to big-time schools, there has to be some kind of recruitment of these top players that is going on. There are 2 other schools in the area that are able to get such kids, yet it seems that Bosco has been getting the best of the best for the past 5-6 years, in each sport. This is making more and more teams in the area, to want to get Bosco and these parochial powers out of their conferences and into their own.

The state has tried to com bate this problem by re-aligning the conferences and making it more competitive. But what came out of this was not a solution but just bigger problems. Stay tuned for the next entry about "Realigning; Hurting or Helping".

State of the Game 2008 (13 Year Old College Commits)

Hello, and welcome to my blog, State of the Game 2008. In this blog I will speak of issues surrounding and defining the sports world in the time of 2008. They will range from Amateurs to High Schoolers to Collegiates to Professionals. The sports that will be discussed consist of basketball, football, and baseball.

Let's start with a hot topic in the world of high school and college basketball; Early Commitments. In the past couple years, top prospects have been committing earlier and earlier to colleges of their choice. There is a big difference of opinion throughout the basketball world as to if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I am here to tell you, if it does not pertain to your kid or someone you knows kid, then do not worry about.

Why would you have a problem with an 8th grader getting offered a full scholarship to a big time university? Isn't that the main achievement we want our high schoolers to achieve? The people that have a problem with this are the ones that say this will make the player lazy and think that everything will always be handed to them on a silver platter. Is it the kid's fault? Absolutely not! It's the greedy and paranoid college coaches that feel they need to stay ahead of the game and get this kid, before any one else does. So they offer him a scholarship. What I say is sign baby sign! You are 13 years old, and you just received a full scholarship to a major university. I think that would make Mom and Dad proud, wouldn't you?