The eighth grade recruitment issue is continuing to be pushed to the forefront by both the local and national media. It's getting to the point where it is getting a little boring and overdone. I understand the need to write the day after the commitment or even the couple days after the verbal, but a week and a half later?
But here is my major issue with the news.
Where was the talk about Louisville accepting a signature from a fifteen-year old high school senior in Amobi Okoye?
I admit, Okoye is a different breed with both intelligence and size. He chose the Cards over an academic scholarship to Harvard...at fifteen. Still, if we are going to call out an outrage to Kentucky accepting a non-binding verbal commitment from an eighth grader that is the same age Okoye was when he sat foot on the UL campus, fifteen, then where was the NCAA officials and university president's nationally dissension that they are expressing now? Where were the articles written by national pundits and the talk on national sports and news programs? Where was all of that?
Was it different because Okoye was smart beyond his years?
Still, if that is the reason, then it continues to not add up to most of the arguments that no 'kid' can know what they want to do at fifteen.
Now I realize Okoye graduated as a fifteen-year old and he was ready to go into college, but was he ready for major college football at that age and at his size? Hindsight is 20/20 because obviously he was, but did everyone truly believe he could make it. Even now, Okoye's body is still growing, something that many NFL scouts loved when he was drafted last year. But at the time, where were the skeptics questioning if a fifteen-year old could hang with 18-23 year old beasts with more football knowledge as well as life lessons than he?
Now I am not saying that recruiting eighth graders is either right or wrong. I think it could become a very slippery slope. But instead of looking so much at the grade, we need to acknowledge the age, even if writers continually seem to debunk this argument.
When and if Michael Avery steps foot in Lexington, he will be a nineteen-year old freshman, giving him a year advantage on his fellow freshmen teammates.
