Saturday, February 6, 2010

Next thing you know, they'll be drafting Pop Warner players

Apparently, Lane Kiffin never took an ethics course in college. If he did, he probably flunked.

Less than a year ago, after being hired as football coach at Tennessee, Kiffin obtained an oral commitment from an 8th grader. Now that he's at USC, Kiffin is still trying to rob the cradle.

Yahoo! Sports & Rivals Inc. are reporting that Kiffin has managed to obtain an advanced oral commitment from 13 year old David Sills from Delaware. Yes, you read that correctly. Sills is 13, and in the 7th grade. He's a quarterback, and already getting the star treatment.

Is nothing sacred anymore? If Kiffin can get away with securing these kids before they've even started high school, what's to stop pro scouts, not to mention parasitic professional leeches like Scott Boras, from showing up at the Little League World Series? And we've already seen that Kiffin can't or won't keep his end of the bargain, having left Tennessee after 1 season to take his ethically-challenged business back to USC, where ethics apparently isn't high on the priority list.

Suffice to say, when Sills is a senior at his high school, there's no guarantee that Kiffin will still be at USC, and the NCAA will find some legal redress to nullify the commitment in the interim.

Let me amend my opening statement. If Kiffin took an ethics course, it probably wasn't at college. It was probably in the executive office of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis. Kiffin might've had his issues with Davis leading to his ouster after a year and a half at his first head coaching job, but he certainly learned something from the experience. And that's a scary thought.

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