And what better way to celebrate it than to bash the despicable Tom Lemming?
How this guy continues to draw a paycheck from the major sports media is really, truly perplexing.
He is the perfect example of the scummy internet recruiting reporter who (wrongly) thinks he is qualified to judge talent and who is merely a glorified booster pushing kids to a certain school.
In the latest news, Lemming is being accused of trying to influence mega-recruit Myron Rolle away from Florida State and to Notre Dame.
“He told me if I kept Notre Dame in mind, the NBC (TV) guy would interview me and they would showcase me during the game,” Rolle said. NBC, which showed the high school game in San Antonio on Jan. 7, also has a contract for Notre Dame home games. Added Rolle: “He told me I’d have a higher chance of being MVP. I took it as having less of a chance of getting MVP if I didn’t keep Notre Dame on my list.”
I’ve heard a lot of dirty stories about what these type of guys have done. In one story, a recruiting ‘expert’ listened over the phone as a player was wooed by a coach, only to leak the content of the phone call to an opposing coaching staff.
How pervasive is the influence of these guys? Well, the Long Beach Press Telegram used to put out a great feature called ‘The Best in the West’, which was an anonymous poll of Pac-10 recruiting coordinators of the best prep players on the West Coast. If a guy was a ’10′, he was considered a sure-fire college star. While recruiting coordinators aren’t perfect, they are eminently more qualified than the men who chose this year’s team–mostly a collection of recruiting nuts and wannabe scouts with no credibility in football circles.
Someday the NCAA is going to clamp down on guys like this and someone–hopefully legitimate reporters–will step into the void to feed the public’s obsession with the recruiting process.
Until then, we’re at the mercy of these guys.
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