college football scholarships for 8th graders?

HERE.

Obviously, the kids can’t sign official letters of intent for another 4 years, so it’s just a sales pitch at this stage. But still, it shows just how cutthroat college sports in the U.S. have become, and how much pressure there is to win, that coaching staffs are seriously scouting 14-year-olds.

In Europe you’re already used to this somewhat, but it’s a fairly surprising development for college sports in the U.S.

My views on this have evolved over the years. My first wish (completely contrary to my earlier views) is that major sports should be moved out of universities (and even high schools) entirely and redirected to athletic clubs, more like the European system. The jock mentality completely distorts high school life in America, and often corrupts university life, as I have seen at first hand at DePaul– which is by no means regarded as one of the “dirty” schools, but still had some fishy-smelling things going on with basketball players when I was there.

My second wish is that our universities stop exploiting the mostly free labor of young adult athletes, many of them from economically struggling strata of society.

I’m a great sports fan, but have had heated arguments even with close friends about this issue. It seems to me that sports should be one thing and academics should be another. Though I didn’t start out thinking that way, I become more that way with each passing year.