Another reason to hate Lane Kiffin?

[Shawn]

From Yahoo Sports:

Last year, a fairly ridiculous story made the rounds wherein Lane Kiffin, then the new head coach at Tennessee, reportedly offered a scholarship to 14-year-old Evan Berry, younger brother of UT All-American Eric Berry and soon-to-be high school freshman, who reportedly accepted. Now at USC, Kiffin apparently figured on Thursday that was setting the bar a little too low -- why target eighth-graders, after all, when you can get to them in seventh grade:

According to the Wilmington News Journal, Bear, Del., seventh-grade quarterback David Sills committed Thursday night to accept a football scholarship from USC.

The 13-year-old, who attends Red Lion Christian Academy, told delawareonline.com, "my heart was beating so fast" when he talked to Kiffin.

Red Lion high school varsity coach Eric Day confirmed confirmed that Kiffin recently offered the teen a scholarship, and that Sills committed, according to the Wilmington paper.

I offer this brief pause to allow you to stop laughing and/or crying. OK, we good?

Onward: Sills is a camp kid, already molded and polished enough to star in at least one earnest promotional video set to a Fountains of Wayne song for his high-priced private coach, Steve Clarkson (or, as he prefers to refer to himself, "Steve Clarkson, Dreammaker"). If he were to eventually join the Trojans, he'd enter as a member of the class of 2015, five full seasons from now. In the meantime, he hopes to pass the seventh and eighth grades and begin studying for his driver's license, among more lurid pursuits.

I maintain, as I did last year when I wrote about the younger Berry, that the usual recruiting parlance of "offers" and "commitments" is rendered virtually meaningless when extended to players too young to have taken a varsity snap. It's almost a contradiction in terms, like a four-sided triangle or something. Coaches aren't allowed to extend official, written scholarship offers until Sept. 1 of a player's junior year in high school -- still three-and-a-half years away for Sills -- and though the scouting process begins much earlier than that for many players, any story that employs the offer/commit language prior to that point is only serving a publicity-seeking sideshow, a grotesquerie of a process that's grotesque enough to begin with. It's no coincidence that both incidents of unabashed middle-school stalking in the past year have been attributed to college football's resident carnival barker, Kiffin, who will push any button for a headline but can't even promise with a straight face that he will be at USC in five years. (Has anyone asked Evan Berry about his "commitment" to Tennessee since Team Kiffin hightailed it for L.A. last month?) That's all Sills' "commitment" is: A weird, slightly disturbing and ultimately empty headline.

In the meantime, USC has landed its first commitment for the class of 2011 from a local player with three seasons of high school play under his belt. That one I'm willing to acknowledge, but in the recruiting business, nothing's in the bank until a signature is on the page


Will Lane Kiffin still be there by the time this kid is ready for college?

[rkrazy]

Coaches like Kiffin and pig sooey singing Petrino give the profession a bad name. The spawn of Monte doesn't have the stuff to be head man. He lacks understanding of 3 important elements: tongue in cheek/emotions in check, committment and maturity. I can't stand the guy and I don't even like the Raiders, Vols or Trojans. The only reason he'll win at USC is because the players that Pete Carroll left behind are top talents. I think it's doubtful that we see the nations best recruits flock to USC annually. Once the current group of players are gone USC will see the real person they hired...

[bigcsr67]

Al Davis was right on this one fellas. Lane Kiffin is a Puke. Lane Kiffin is a scummy turd who will eventualy run USC into shambles. I already hated USC, but now the hate is even greater. This guy is a blow J.

[Orca]

Don't they have any rules to protect these kids from getting recruited so young? If they don't, shouldn't they?

[brice587]

Don't they have any rules to protect these kids from getting recruited so young? If they don't, shouldn't they?

They cant officially sign comittment until some point during their junior year of high school. This really doesn't mean anything, but it is ridiculous.

[Shawn]

Lane Kiffin is the true definition of a "snake oil salesman" , the USC program was already in danger of getting hit with NCAA violations and now this guy brings in his own history of possible NCAA violations, Tennessee will be better off without Kiffin even though he screwed them over pretty bad when he left after only one year. The good news is that if you already hated USC, this guy could get the program in much worse NCAA trouble and send the program into the toilet.

[Phish Brigade]

I knew that the recruiting process started early, but they shouldn't be able to talk to 12 and 13 year old kids. You ever wonder why some players think they can walk on water by the time they get in the pros? Avoid the law? That's the reason right there. Having a grown man with that much power telling them that they're gonna be rich and famous... it's disgusting actually.