Here's a crazy story recruiting story for you, taken from the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Less than 10 hours after Fernley offensive lineman Kevin Hart announced in front of the entire student body he would be signing a letter of intent to play football at California, questions were raised about the validity of the commitment.

At issue is whether Cal or any other program has actually offered the 6-foot-5, 290-pound left guard a scholarship. Hart made his announcement Friday afternoon.

The story goes on to detail that someone may have tried to impersonate Cal's Coach Jeff Tedford and at this point, we're not really sure if they have even offered Hart a scholarship. Law enforcement is getting involved and this is becoming a national story.

I'll try to follow the story to its conclusion so we can see what happened. After the Duke Lacrosse scandal, you never want to rush to judgment on who's to blame here.


It did get me to thinking though. How was someone able to pull it off? It's simple really. We all have the dream of playing big time sports. Hart looks like he has a Division I offensive lineman's body type. (You can see his picture from the Reno Gazette-Journal on the right). Hart attends a high school which has never had a student receive a scholarship to a Division I school directly out of high school, so he has no examples to base the recruiting process on. It's the perfect storm of circumstances and all the chips fell into place.


What high school athlete wouldn't want to be talked about everyday on the recruiting websites? Even now, I'd love to sit in front of a microphone with everyone from the town looking on and tell them which school I was attending. I'd have my hats lined up (Georgia, Alabama and USC). I'd have given misleading quotes so fans on each school's message board would have something to talk about. I'd even pick up the wrong hat at first. It would be the USC hat, because we all know I had USC on the list just to give me some recruiting cred. And I'd tell the whole world I'd be attending......


I guess you'll have to wait for the press conference.


Update: Both Cal and Oregan have said they were not recruiting Hart.