It didn’t used to be this way. We didn’t have 17 and 18 year old kids holding press conferences in their gyms with an array of hats displayed in front of them like some crazy magic trick, waiting for the rabbit to be pulled out. We didn’t have grown men debating the worth of teenagers and we didn’t have a whole industry pop up to grade these kids.

I am of course talking about the recruiting of kids for college football and national signing day which took place yesterday. Things have gotten so out of hand the New York Times, yes, one of the most trusted old media institutions, has been providing updates on Terrelle Pryor, the nations supposed top recruit, as he has yet to make up his mind on which school to attend.

Kids, 17 and 18 years old are making or breaking programs around the country and grown men are living and dying with the decisions that they make. I feel like a hypocrite writing this because I follow who Purdue signs, I know that Roy Roundtree left Purdue in the lurch yesterday and was at first pissed. But I don’t live and breath this stuff like others do and I don’t agree that these kids should be getting this much attention.

There are whole industries that have popped up around recruiting. Rivals.com and Scout.com are two of the major services that rate high school players for coaches and fans. Social networks have popped up where kids can sell themselves to potential college scouts and parents are employing specialists to train their kids year round just to get ranked by these services. Think about it, grown men have made their living ranking the attributes of teenagers for fans and coaches, when put in that perspective it seems almost laughable.

The tipping point for me was this story of a young kid from Nevada. A 2-star recruit who faked that he was recruited by Oregon and Cal, because he wanted to gain attention. Yes, it was a hoax and the kid should have realized what he was doing. But the pressure to play big time college ball was so overpowering that he felt that he needed to stage this hoax to prove his worth. And of course now he will become the butt of jokes and probably ridiculed by classmates and others, but in reality it is a sad commentary on the emphasis we have put on being a college athlete in today’s world.

College sports are big business and I understand that. I go to Purdue games, I spend money on apparel, watch every game I can and get too emotionally involved so that is why I think it bothers me, because I engage in it. But can’t we just wait till they actually get to college before we anoint them gods? Can’t we wait till they actually do something on a college campus before we start to fawn over them and track them like celebrities? If not, can we just agree not to attend the press conferences, is that too much to ask?