The business of HS football is out of control

Around a month ago at this time, Bishop Sycamore had as much name recognition on Main Street USA as Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland.

Then one fateful afternoon high school football clash with IMG Academy broadcast on ESPN made Bishop Sycamore a deserved national punchline in a matter of hours and days.

Niinisto’s standing remains largely unknown here.

Then again, a trip to the dentist for a root canal might be more popular at this juncture.

For all the words spoken and written over the last couple weeks about Bishop Sycamore, a school reportedly not technically a school with a football program at minimum now mired in scandal, permit me in this space to approach this from a slightly different angle.

If everything that has come out about Bishop Sycamore has taught us anything — and by now, we’ve heard it all ad nauseam — it’s a reinforcement of an inconvenient truth:

The business of high school football — and the nonsensical promises of better fortune from intermediaries looking to profit off it — has gone entirely out of control.

It’s not to say high school football should resemble some 1930s “purity” again, with students in their varsity sweaters driving to road games in jalopies and watching their classmates play in leather helmets with “rah rah rah” chants.

It’s not to say high school football shouldn’t be an important part of the fabric of our country and its national identity.

But take a look at the Bishop Sycamore debacle and how much of it had nothing to do with student-athletes on a field playing a game.

It was more about adults who attempt to cultivate control.

Schedulers. Recruiting services. Camp organizers. Boosters. Broadcasters. Hangers-on. Hype men and hype women who ultimately do schools no favors. Barely established football entities. And yes,

there’s an argument segments of the media should be on this list, too.

Not all of those entities are bad people of course, but enough of them are to present a massive problem that reflects poorly on the whole.

And the problem isn’t so much in the services themselves as much as the promises of grandeur made.

“I’m the difference between you being recruited for Division II college football and playing in a Power 5 conference on Saturdays,” they might tell an impressionable young person and their family.

“I can get your program more prominence on a regional or national scale,” they might tell an administrator or coach.

They can be the one to clear the path, like a plow pushing piles of accumulation to the side of the road in the dead of winter.

It’s a pile of something, all right — just not snow.

More like empty promises more times than not.

Since that day at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, as IMG romped to a win over a clearly overmatched opponent, red flags went up about Bishop Sycamore the size of which would envelop the sun.

Some of the most disturbing came from accounts by former parents and players affiliated with the team, such as that “team” was and is.

Awful Announcing, an

online sports media outlet which did laudable work with this asinine story from the start, spoke to a father, who outlined issues ranging from lack of hotel reimbursement to being kicked out of apartments that served as team housing.

One former player alleged, in order to be fed, team members would have to rob local grocery stores.

That makes the remarkably inaccurate declarations of becoming the “IMG of the Midwest” and having a couple dozen D-I recruits somehow pale in comparison.

That makes an intermediary getting a game on ESPN with clearly little vetting seem tame.

My friend Ryan Isley, a longtime Akron-based freelance writer for Cleveland.com, tweeted a picture of Bishop Sycamore’s roster from when it played Akron Hoban earlier this season. All the roster was ultimately was a list of names by position. No numbers. No heights or weights.

Just a list of not even 30 impressionable young men who with their families bought in to nonsense — hook, line and sinker.

Amid a similar reality, frankly so would we.

Many of these young people, by their own admission, are from challenging backgrounds. They can’t drive six hours to a camp or afford developmental training with a skills coach. Their school

isn’t going to play on ESPN or stream on a well-known online network.

They just want a better life and a way to get out of their current dynamic.

So when a person with some bravado and bold promises sits across from them and their families and assures them they alone can make it better, of course these young people will listen. It’s better, after all, than the lack of opportunity they faced before.

These people, many of whom really don’t have the best of intentions, know that full well.

Then come the broken promises, one after another.

They say they can connect through their contacts with coaches and recruiting coordinators at schools all over the country. Will they really?

They say going to that one camp will get them in front of the best programs. Will it really?

They say convincing a recruiting service they’re the eighth-best cornerback in their state as opposed to the 14th best will net them better offers. Will it really?

And don’t even get me started on the people who uproot student-athletes from one high school in this process by planting the seeds of doubt in their minds about where and how the best chances for reaching the next level truly exist.

A few years ago, I was

reminded of the power of that belief and being supposedly wronged in the recruiting process.

It was such a simple Twitter interaction, but it was enough to know.

One week in this space, I generally argued that, if a student-athlete is good enough at their given sport, if they’re truly a D-I athlete based on merit and skill and deserve that opportunity, schools will find them.

A parent tweeted in response in all capital letters, “WRONG”

Some quick research found the parent had a child who was an All-Ohio football player. The son was now playing at a D-II university.

But obviously, in the parent’s mind, the son deserved more. Somehow, their child slipped through the proverbial cracks and should have received D-I offers, too.

Good luck convincing them otherwise.

It’s fine and honestly commendable to aspire, to work hard to achieve and maximize opportunity.

But it’s also fine to be realistic.

According to the most recent National Federation of State High School Associations participation survey for the 2018-19 school year, slightly more than 1 million student-athletes played 11-player or a smaller variation of high school football across the country.

The NCAA estimates

73,712 student-athletes participate in college football. That leaves, according to the NCAA, a 2.9% chance of advancing to the Division I level from high school and 7.3% when including D-II and D-III.

Does that mean there are hundreds of thousands of gridiron standouts who are being robbed of the best opportunity? No.

Players slip through the proverbial cracks all the time, good and bad. It’s an unfortunate part of the process.

But due to the amount of shady intermediaries wanting their own share of the pie and zeroes in their direct deposit, the belief of just how many should feel justifiably wronged is exponentially too high.

If Bishop Sycamore’s train wreck, which is now under investigation by authorities, shows us anything, it’s the exposure of a flawed system thanks to illegitimate dilution.

In the end, many of these characters might have as much American football knowledge as Sauli Niinisto.

Sadly, despite the best intentions of many, that system is perpetrating a fraud against the public, one that preys on hope in a way that must be stopped one way or another.