College Football Recruiting: Adults Gone Mad

By Christopher Gabriel
Blog Harbor and CGabriel.com

In the often complex world of working one’s way through the teenage years, one thing stands out as the great equalizer for those gifted on the gridiron:  College Football Recruiting.  Even more than college basketball recruiting, it is the one arena in life where teens are calling the shots and the adults are made to enjoy it.

I’m addicted to college football, have been since I was a kid growing up in Chicago.  I dreamed of seeing Alabama-Tennessee in Neyland Stadium, USC-UCLA in the Los Angeles Coliseum or Michigan-Ohio State in Ohio Stadium.  Since those days in the late 1960’s, I’ve been fortunate to attend games at more than 60 Division 1 stadiums, gone to four Rose Bowls and spent more than my share of afternoons and evenings in Knoxville, L.A. and Columbus watching the aforementioned rivalries play out.

Beyond college football, I love everything about college athletics; men’s or women’s, makes no difference.  But nothing, not basketball, hockey or any other sport I could mention, holds my attention the way college football does.

Thankfully though, I’ve never gotten caught up in college football’s recruiting season, a sport in and of itself, the way many are routinely sucked into its black hole.

I know perfectly wonderful, mature professionals who are great husbands and fathers, often leaders in their respective communities – in other words, stable, level-headed individuals – who flip the switch and have nothing short of an emotional breakdown the second they hear the recruit they were coveting for their favorite team chose a different school, often a hated rival.

And the initial breakdown is only stage one of the more prolific main event that follows.

The main event is the inevitable trip to the fan’s favorite online community: The Team Message Board.  While there, the now crazed fan - we’ll call him “Joe” – will savage the young man and, many times by extension, his family since Joe knows these recruits and their families often read message boards as a way to sample the tenor of the fan base.  

Joe will rip him in full “voice” with as much vitriolic prose he can muster before slowly backing away from his computer for a beverage and a few deep breaths.  The computer is located in a darkened basement Joe affectionately calls The Bunker, with windows boarded up, a tiny fridge holding a dozen or so of those beverages and a stack of newspapers sitting on a metal chair containing articles insisting Joe’s favorite recruit – former favorite recruit – loved Joe’s school and was all but certain he was coming there.

Eventually, Joe will write a few more gems and then make his way to the phone so that he can call his favorite sportstalk radio program to rip the kid just a bit more.

Joe’s fatal mistake: He trusted the words of a big-time, center-of-attention athlete who happens to be a 17 or 18 year-old kid.  In the bigger picture of life they may be all-world athletes, but at the end of the day they’re kids.  They hang out at malls, they have girlfriends and like most any other teen, they have issues with parents, siblings or anyone who raises an eyebrow at them.  They’re kids.

But most importantly, and this is what the Joe’s of the world fail to understand:  They are making a decision that is right for them.  The school, the program and the entire social environment are factored into what makes the most sense for them.  Not Joe. 

Far too often, fans attending college or pro sporting events believe the price of their ticket entitles them to act like idiots irrespective of those around them.  Profanity, and often much worse, is just fine because, as they’ll insist, they paid to get in. 

Sadly, in the anonymous world of the internet, college football fans often take wildly unacceptable behavior to a new low, repeatedly insulting young men and/or their families simply because they made a decision based upon what was right for them.

And make no mistake, most college football fans aren’t the least bit like Joe.  Not by a longshot.  Nevertheless, I often wonder if the card-carrying fans on the lunatic fringe would show a bit more restraint if some of these message boards, or comment sections for newspapers online, had even a modicum of accountability.

I’m a huge proponent of the First Amendment; people can darn well say what they want.  But what we’re talking about here has everything to do with civility, maturity and, Heaven forbid, common sense.   

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