I am now a LeBron James fan but probably not for the same reasons as most people. While I respect his accomplishments as a basketball player, I came to have a new admiration for “King” James when he spoke out recently about colleges trying to recruit his 10-year-old son, LeBron James Jr. The older LeBron isn’t happy about it, saying there should be NCAA rules against it. He told a Detroit radio station, “It should be a violation. You shouldn’t be recruiting 10-year-old kids.”
The NCAA has very specific rules about recruiting. Its handbook states: “A prospective student-athlete is a student who has started classes for the ninth grade. In addition, a student who has not started classes for the ninth grade becomes a prospective student-athlete if the institution provides such an individual (or the individual’s relatives or friends) any financial assistance or other benefits that the institution does not provide to prospective students generally.”
That means college coaches are not prevented from monitoring young players like LeBron James Jr., per NCAA rules. But just because they can, doesn’t mean they should!
Take quarterback Daron Bryden for example. At first glance, his list of accomplishments is incredible. Daron has appeared on CBS, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Yahoo, NBC & HDNet. He’s even been compared to Tom Brady! But Daron is only 12 years old.
So is Tyson Thornton. He’s a 5-foot-11, 167-pound running back with great explosiveness and surprisingly good body control for a kid his size and age. Tyson and Daron are the first sixth graders to be monitored by the recruiting website Rivals.com. It seems very wrong to me that a recruiting site would follow the careers of athletes who haven’t even gone through puberty yet. I think it’s also wrong to put children through the emotional and physical rigors of being compared to a pro.
While Jordan was growing up, I saw fellow parents put unnecessary pressure on their children because they felt that that their son or daughter had exceptional athletic ability. They often placed their children in leagues outside of school. These children played sports year round and participated in travel teams as well. Despite the parents’ best intentions, the results were almost always the same: the children got burned out. Now, none of those kids play sports in any capacity. Most of them didn’t even pursue sports beyond high school.
While it is understandable that schools and recruiters would keep an eye on remarkably exceptional young players, it’s hard to imagine any college actively pursuing a 5th grader or 6th grader for the purpose of getting that player’s allegiance to their school. It is simply a bad idea to submit these kids, no matter their athletic prowess, to the kind of scrutiny and pressure that adult athletes face.
Part of the reason there is so much interest in LeBron James Jr. is because his dad tweeted a video of his son dominating a youth basketball tournament a few months ago. While LeBron was just being a proud dad, with more than 19 million Twitter followers, his share reached far beyond family and friends! As parents of young athletes, we need to weigh the pride we feel in our children’s early athletic success against overexposure and the potential costs of too much attention.
Sure, kids like it when folks tell them they are great or when they see their names written online or in print. They love to see their moms and dads beam with pride. But as parents, we have to manage expectations. When our children are compared to the greatest players in the game and told they are the next best thing, there’s a possibility things could end poorly. There is a season for everything. Let’s allow our children to enjoy their youth.