Recruiting in High School Sports:A Real-Life Chronicle

The national media barnstormed into Memphis earlier this decade when former Commercial Appeal sports writer Gary Parrish (now national basketball writer for CBS Sportsline) uncovered the mother lode of recruiting scandals in the Albert Means case. For the first time, the national media was able to get an inside look at the biggest problem in recruiting today, which is scandal.

Albert Means was an 18-year-old man who attended Trezevant High School in inner-city Memphis. Sandwiched in an area of the city that is lifeless, Means was garnering national attention for his prowess on the gridiron as a defensive lineman. Standing well over six feet and approaching three hundred pounds, Albert Means was the most coveted football prospect in the state of Tennessee his senior season. With that notoriety, the door was opened for a booster from the University of Alabama to pay his high school coach and an assistant coach over $100,000 to influence Albert to attend Alabama.

Gary Parrish's story brought back memories of the Kentucky basketball scandal when a booster sent the father of high school phenom Chris Mills a similar amount of money to get Mills to attend Kentucky. The money was found. Kentucky was found out. And Chris Mills ended up at Arizona before going on to play in the National Basketball Association.

But for those close to high school athletics, the Means and Mills cases are not isolated incidents but the culture of amateur athletics and big-time college sports in the 21^st Century. The interesting thing is that most people believe that it is only the McDonald's, All-American basketball player or the Parade All-American football player who has his decision influenced by people that have accepted money to steer him to a specific school. That could not be further away from the truth. The reality is that every day, parents, friends, and mentors are being bought off by boosters and friends of programs big and small.

My introduction to the dark side of recruiting came in high school when a teammate of mine who eventually went to the NFL was offered a condo apartment and a sports utility vehicle to attend the University of Mississippi. Interestingly enough, people for Alabama also made significant offers to get this individual to sign to play for the Crimson Tide.

With signing day set to begin in a couple of weeks the pressure is on college coaches to sign the best, most athletic young men to come and play for them. With their job security on the line it is no wonder that coaches feel the pressure and no wonder boosters will stop at nothing to get the best players to come to their school. Beyond the business side of football which is a major thing (imagine the University of Tennessee where 105,000 people gather seven times a year with an average ticket price of $30) over $22million can be attributed to the bottom line of the operating budget of an athletic program. Couple that with fanatical fans and you have a breeding ground for trouble.

Pretty soon, coaches will be sitting in the homes of wide-eyed 17-year-old kids in the inner city just like Albert Means. Everyone will be in awe of who is sitting on the sofa. Coaches like Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer, and Mack Brown will try to sell their program to a young man who idolizes these coaches. But what the young man does not know and the coaches are equally unaware of is that somewhere, that young man's coach and a booster from the program are meeting to decide on the price of a marriage between the talent inside that young man and the school that booster represents.

That has scandal written all over it.