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Surprise: Recruiters Can’t Stop Recruiting

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

Norm Eavenson sells his high school basketball recruiting scouting service to 65 college basketball teams, providing college coaches with an essential filter in the age of AAU and YouTube highlight clips.
HYATTSVILLE, MD - MARCH 24: Norm Eavenson takes notes on the players at DeMatha High School during a Metropolitan Challenge showcase tournament. His high school basketball recruiting scouting service provides information on players to over 70 college basketball teams.
Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The simple truth is that everything is different now in the Covid-19 world and that certainly applies to sports. Not only have competitive sports ground to a halt, but so has recruiting.

Well at least theoretically.

The NCAA is quite aware that recruiting continues and honestly, what did they expect?

First of all, these guys are hard-wired to recruit. Sitting home and doing nothing must be almost torturous for guys who are conditioned to push themselves to see one more recruit, one more talent, one more possible late bloomer. They wouldn’t know how to go cold turkey anymore than Chet Baker did because they’re junkies too, looking for the rush you get when you’re the first to know.

Even those who are abiding by the mandate not to recruit while everything is shut down are surely holed up in their mancaves with the lights low or off, staring at grainy YouTube video of some kid from Northwest Nebraska or the Mountain Empire or the Navajo Nation who has a great video package out.

Bird dogging gets in your blood and you need to keep going to stay sharp. You need that hit, you need that ability to sit in the bleachers when your bladder is about to rupture because the kid you want to see is up in three minutes and you don’t want to miss anything.

Remember that coach a few years ago who was at a sanctioned event and was sick? He didn’t want to go home but ultimately he had no choice and good thing: his doctors told him a few more hours and his medical crisis would have killed him.

That’s the kind of guy they’re trying to tell to stop it, to cut it the hell out. Good luck with that.