Illinois men’s head basketball coach Bruce Weber (not pictured) believes that it’s never too early to start the search for your stars of the (distant) future. High school kids? Why recruit high school kids when you can get your opportunistic paws on them at a much earlier age?
“Our staff has done a good job of identifying kids. Even 5th, 6th graders if we can and get them down to camp, get them down to games, get them on campus and then make them feel good about Illinois. … It’s a special atmosphere. We have tremendous fans. Attacking those kids at an early age has definitely helped.”
Well, anytime you can go on record with your effusive praise for “attacking…kids at an early age,” you’re doing something right.
Nevermind the fact that in the tumultuous world of college coaching, very few individuals (Weber not included) have the cachet and job stability to be recruiting kids for 8 years down the line. There’s about a 2% chance Weber is still at Illinois eight years from now, not to mention the odds that a 10-year-old with early skills actually pans out into a top-flite high school prospect. There have been more than enough “next big things” in sport to flame out and crash way short of their supposed potential to know that recruiting a kid who hasn’t even reached puberty yet is far from a safe bet. Why not take all the time and money spent on recruiting 5th & 6th graders and buy a bunch of scratch-off lottery tickets instead? They’d probably get about the same return on their investment.
Or, you know, they could recruit kids who will actually help their team in the next couple of years. Groundbreaking strategy, I know. Anyways, to each their own, and if Weber wants to keep his program alive by prowling elementary school gyms in an attempt to locate the next Luther Head, then more power to him and the Illini. Let’s just keep it clean out there. Nobody wants to see any NCAA scandals involving improper benefits in the form of chocolate Yoo-Hoo and fruit roll-up snacks, do we?
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Big Ten hoops coach recruiting elementary school kids [BenMaller.com, via the Chicago Tribune]
