The college basketball recruiting world is up in arms because an 18-year-old pulled a fast one on it.
Dave Telep, scout.com's recruiting guru, said Oct. 18 in The Chronicle that he was "surprised" that Brandan Wright chose to attend North Carolina. He added, "I think people who knew the Brandan Wright recruitment were generally taken back."
Yeah, people who knew the Brandan Wright recruitment were shocked at the power forward's decision because they believed that UNC was far from Wright's top choice. But what about people who actually know Brandan Wright?
"I'm happy for him that he's made a decision because I knew it was very hard for him," George Pitts, Wright's coach at Brentwood Academy, told the Durham Herald-Sun. "He had it down to Duke, Carolina, Kentucky and Vanderbilt."
Pitts doesn't sound too shocked to me.
And that's the problem with any coverage of college recruiting. These so-called experts who invest their time in getting to know high school kids don't-and can't-really know anything.
Wright is a kid. He's a kid with tremendous athleticism and basketball talent, but he's just a kid.
Kids-even tremendously athletic and talented kids-don't even know what they're thinking most of the time. So how could a recruiting guru, who is only interested in knowing these kids because of their basketball talent and potential value to the great machine of collegiate athletics, ever begin to predict their actions?
The fact that there is an entire industry trying to predict the college decisions of teenagers reflects a growing pathology. Recruiting websites charge as much as 90 dollars for a year of access. Rivals.com and scout.com have lists of the best sophomore basketball players-14- and 15-year-olds who haven't even played a game in their second year of high school. And those lists even include where some of these kids may go to college.
Because, obviously, the recruiting gurus already know when the recruits themselves have finished a full quarter of high school.
Yeah, right.
California, Nevada, UCLA and UNLV are all in the running for 6-foot-7, 210 pound sophomore Luke Babbit, according to rivals.com. Papa Dia, a 6-foot-8 sophomore from New York City, is torn between Connecticut, Indiana, Syracuse and Virginia Tech.
When I was a sophomore, I was infinitely more concerned with building my franchise in Madden 2001 than I was with college. I wasn't only unprepared to make a decision on college, I was unprepared to make a decision on what constituted a healthy lunch or whether I should pack the grapes at the top or bottom of my lunch bag.
We shouldn't be so surprised when guys like Brandan Wright make unexpected decisions. Under the 6-foot-10 frames and 40-inch verticals, they're just kids. They should be expected to change their minds and make baffling choices. That's what kids do.
Let them all just be kids. That is, until they get on campus.
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