http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/11263784
Something is terribly wrong! This makes me a little sick to my stomach.
What part of it makes you sick, the part where coaches host clinics for elite players with the hope of getting them interested in their program or the part where the NCAA decided to put an end to it?
The part that the "players" they are talking about can't even be called teenagers! They are twelve years old. Something is fundamentally wrong with a system that even has to address twelve year olds in relation to college basketball, unless it has something to do with them being hired to wipe sweat off the floor during timeouts.
Good Lord, I can't believe I just used the phrase, "fundamentally wrong with a system..."
To give some perspective, European soccer players get recruited to soccer schools at a really really young age. Yes, schools for children (like ages 4 and up) to play soccer. I fine this really odd but what are you going to do.
money money money...with a nice splash of hypocrisy. That's your answer. Every year with the NCAA. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Do you have have a problem with a 12 year girl competing in gymnasts?
How about 7th graders that go to full-time Tennis school in FL?
Ditto European soccer players as noted above.
Do you think we should ban all 12-year from any kind of attention in sports or is b-ball so much worse than every other sport that it needs to be more regulated?
I think 12 year olds should be where they belong, making sneakers in sweatshops.
Quote from: RawdogDX on January 16, 2009, 12:28:18 PM
I think 12 year olds should be where they belong, making sneakers in sweatshops.
And here I thought they were just out trying to have sex whenever possible.
I think you missed an important line from the article...the NCAA is giving some consideration to women's beach volleyball as a sport. I vote yes.
Quote from: AnotherMU84 on January 16, 2009, 07:23:47 AM
Do you have have a problem with a 12 year girl competing in gymnasts?
How about 7th graders that go to full-time Tennis school in FL?
Ditto European soccer players as noted above.
Do you think we should ban all 12-year from any kind of attention in sports or is b-ball so much worse than every other sport that it needs to be more regulated?
I do in general have a problem with this. Not because of the attention, but because there are parents out there that are basically forcing their children from a very young age to train like they do. Don't tell me a 6 year old girl wants to go practice gymnastics for 4 hours a day (and they do start that young, so you may say 12, but thats after 6 years), children change too much for them to do one any hobby much less a commit to an elite full-time sport when they are so young-one with as much pressure and strict attitude - for nearly there entire childhood. What if the child wants to try another sport at some point? No sport should ever be "full-time" for someone who cannot even drive themselves to it. Too many of these sports, especially with younger children, seem, to me, become more about the parents and not about how much fun the child is having.
Quote from: KCMarq09 on January 16, 2009, 02:53:41 PM
? No sport should ever be "full-time" for someone who cannot even drive themselves to it.
That's the best line I've ever seen on this topic KC. Kudos.
Quote from: ErickJD08 on January 15, 2009, 10:17:00 PM
To give some perspective, European soccer players get recruited to soccer schools at a really really young age. Yes, schools for children (like ages 4 and up) to play soccer. I find this really odd but what are you going to do.
I'll tell you what you do. If you are the NCAA you implement a rule that says that no coach or person affiliated with a university or its sports programs may, under any circumstances, contact a kid until after they complete their sophomore year of high school or turn 16 years old. Period.
These are children. A 7th grader could be 12 years old! Not even a teenager. It's disgusting. Literally disgusting.
Quote from: Avenue Commons on January 16, 2009, 03:51:59 PM
I'll tell you what you do. If you are the NCAA you implement a rule that says that no coach or person affiliated with a university or its sports programs may, under any circumstances, contact a kid until after they complete their sophomore year of high school or turn 16 years old. Period.
These are children. A 7th grader could be 12 years old! Not even a teenager. It's disgusting. Literally disgusting.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Colleges have had summer camps for kids for years. Every kid in Chicago got annual invitations to Ray Meyer's summer camp in Three Lakes. It was a fun event for the kids, and there was no pretense that you had to have D-1 skills to attend.
Now the issue is that these camps have become less a summertime diversion for kids (and a way for coaches to supplement meager incomes), into a thinly disguised strategic recruiting tool designed to identify and build relationships years before recruiting traditionally begins.
Without the NCAA's restrictions, schools could "waive" tuition for promising players and give them extra attention during the camps--all in an effort to create a strong bond between the player/family and the coach very early in the process.
By banning all contact to kids younger than sophomores, you eliminate all camps without regard to their merits. The NCAA is right to attempt to rein in the excesses without going overboard.
I think that Joe camel and Ronald McDonald are more disgusting attacks on the sanctity of childhood.