I know many SFTC readers are die-hard sports fans. (Just kidding -- two certain attorneys in Oswego, N.Y., and New Market, Md., are probably the only ones.) So although this post is somewhat sports-related, all of you non sportsies can think of it as a mystery/thriller post. I think you'll find it interesting even though it mentions the word "football." To make it really worth your while, I'm including details below for how you can win the much-anticipated second SFTC trivia music giveaway.
Seems that a high school football player in Nevada thought he was being recruited to play at a handful of top-tier college football programs, including the University of California and Oregon. Friday, he held a news conference at his high school -- in front of other students and local media -- to announce that he had chosen to play football, um, I mean enroll as a student-athlete, at Cal. According to the Washington Post's account of the news conference, the kid had two caps -- one Cal, one Oregon -- on the table in front of him, and he made the announcement all dramatic-ish by grabbing and putting on the Cal hat. (Now if that's not drama, you tell me what is.)
There was one small problem. Turns out that Cal hadn't actually recruited him. Nor had Oregon, for that matter. Or Illinois or Nevada Oklahoma State, some of the other schools he believed had tried to woo him.
Oops.
Apparently nobody is sure whether the kid was duped by people who were pretending to be coaches from the various schools, or whether he made the whole thing up himself -- possibly to somehow cover for having accepted a loan of several hundred dollars from someone he believed to be a recruiter -- and couldn't figure out how to stop the hype machine that led to his news conference.
By the way, high school seniors having pressers to announce where they're going to school: Great trend that's developed lately, isn't it? How about we just stop that silliness? If I were in school, I'd be all for getting out of class for another lame-ass assembly, but isn't the pressure of choosing your own college enough without having to watch some other kid tell TV cameras where he's playing, er, enrolling next year?
The NCAA and law enforcement are investigating. If I read anything else about it, you'll be the first blog readers I tell. Promise.
Oh, one other thing. I thought it was kind of funny that the student in question was described by the Washington Post as a "6-foot-5, 290-pound football player" and by The New York Times as "6-foot-4, 305-pound senior." Can we get our fake-overhyped-football-recruit stories straight, people?
Today's contest: This post's heading is, as you might have noticed, a song title. Win a free iTunes song of your choice by being the first person to post a comment with the first line of the song's lyrics, the artist and the year the song was released. (Yes, you'll really get a free song.)
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