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Baseball Expert Leo Mazzone
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WELCOME TO BOB'S BLOG!!!
 Welcome to Bob's Blog. When I first heard of big time college basketball coaches offering scholarships to 8th and 9th graders, I thought it was a joke. Well, I still think it’s a joke, only not the fun kind. It’s a joke as in: “you gotta be kidding me!”
Recently, several national big time college programs have offered scholarships to 13- and 14-year-olds. In the past several days,
Kentucky has accepted commitments from an 8th grader and a 9th grader.
Arizona recently offered a scholarship to a 7th grader. Kentucky head coach Billy Gillespie says it’s the wave of the future and the Kentucky president says he thinks it’s okay because Gillespie has to start early to build a pipeline to
Lexington to return the Wildcats to the glory years.
Well, I offer a word of warning to
Kentucky and all the colleges so desperate to recruit a kid that they throw good sense out the window. This is dangerous business.
 Exhibit A is Taylor King from
Huntington Beach California . Even before he’d enrolled in high school, Taylor King—spurred on by his father, by the way—committed to UCLA shortly before starting ninth grade in 2003. Before he finished high school King changed his mind, withdrew his commitment and signed with Duke. He enrolled in Duke two years ago and now, recently, transferred from Duke to Villanova. His own father says it was a mistake to even think about a college commitment prior to puberty, prior to knowing what his physical growth would even be, and without having any way to know if the coach would even still be there.
He isn’t, by the way.
The NCAA and college coaches have to put an immediate end to this madness.
Taylor was not allowed to be a kid and now is in his third college not even sure if he wants to continue with basketball.
Couple more college basketball recruiting stories that point to the turbulence in the sport: Brad Tinsley an Oregon City, Oregon point guard star who also committed early to Pepperdine, has now changed his mind and chosen Vanderbilt over
Wake
Forest .
Also in Tennessee, Junior college all American Bobby Maze of Hutchinson Community college—who had started at Oklahoma—has now picked the Volunteers over Cincinnati and Kentucky. He’s a player: 6-3, 190 pounds, with 21 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds and 55 steals. But is he anything approaching a college student? Maze himself says he’s all set to go to
Tennessee , but does have some significant junior college class work to finish this summer before he’ll be eligible. You probably already know that
Tennessee lost point guard Ramar Smith and Duke Crews, who just announced that they won’t be back next year.
And my friend Doc Rivers son, Jeremiah, has decided to leave Georgetown where he was a defensive specialist off the bench and will now enroll at the
University of
Florida . Jeremiah was the fifth player recruited by John Thompson III who has transferred in the past two years. He’ll have to sit out next year.
Can’t finish the Blog without some college football talk.
Last week LSU quarterback Ryan Perrilloux was kicked off the team, leaving only redshirt freshman Jarret Lee and Harvard junior transfer Andrew Hatch as realistic quarterback candidates for the defending national champion Tigers. That reminded me to look into the QB situation across the SEC and, although it’s clear that both Florida’s Tim Tebow and Georgia’s Matthew Stafford are the best of the bunch and could both be Heisman candidates, the rest of the league isn’t so certain.
So, in the interest of drawing some cranky emails, I’ve decided to rank the QB’s as of the end of spring practice. Here they are:
- Tim Tebow,
Florida
- Matthew Stafford,
- Jevan Snead, Ole Miss
- John Parker Wilson,
Alabama
- Wesley Carroll,
Mississippi
State
- Kodi Burns,
Auburn
- Chris Nickson, MacKenzie Adams, Vanderbilt
- Whoever is eligible and/or not incarcerated,
South Carolina
- Casey Dick,
Arkansas
- Curtis Pulley,
Kentucky
- Jonathon Crompton,
Tennessee
- Jarret Lee, LSU
So, whadda ya think? Will any SEC quarterback be better than Tebow or
Stafford ?
Let me know your rankings of the SEC quarterbacks going into the fall at Bobsblog@CSS-Sports.com. I am also blogging on air every Friday on SportsNite—and I’d love to share your blog thoughts on line and on air. Well, that’s it for this week’s blog…hit your keyboard and let me know what you think about those quarterbacks…
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