College basketball and football are being overrun with child agents who call themselves coaches or friends, when they’re actually looking to profit off of any child with a chance to make it big.

Last Friday, USC coach Lane Kiffin offered a football scholarship to a 13-year-old boy from Delaware. David Sills made national headlines by verbally committing to USC after receiving the offer.

The person responsible for this travesty is Steve Clarkson, a self-proclaimed personal coach — or a child-pusher.

This sort of thing popped up at USC once before in basketball with O.J. Mayo. Mayo was given whatever he wanted, from clothes to money, by a sports agency called BDA in order to profit off of his pro sports contract.

The USC basketball program paid for BDA and Mayo’s decisions by receiving various penalties from the NCAA. The program had to forfeit wins, money, aspects of recruiting and future postseason play all because a player did something and a coach allowed it to happen.

Does anyone remember LeBron James? He was given one or more massive loans in high school by various people so he could live the good life in his Hummer H2. Although the loans were controversial, the team wasn’t penalized until James accepted two jerseys as a gift from a local clothing store. This violated Ohio High School Athletic Association rules and they declared him ineligible to play. James had to win a lawsuit to regain eligibility.

How do these occurrences go unnoticed by the NCAA or these kids’ coaches? The only defendable case out of what I have mentioned is James’ loans, but his overwhelming popularity in high school was ridiculous.

If people wanted to see James in action while he was in high school, they just had to turn on ESPN, which was nationally televising his games.

This pimping of children is becoming much worse than it was in the past. Most of these child signees break their commitment to the school before signing day even comes, so it would seem that it is pointless to offer a scholarship in the first place.

It’s not feasible to completely regulate these child agents and firms from contacting children, which is a failure of the system, but what about the coaches who accept these athletes?

Kentucky coach John Calipari left Memphis and UMass with NCAA sanctions upon his departure to go to a different job, forcing the schools vacate their Final Four appearances.
Memphis is the most recent infraction that Calipari allowed to happen. Derrick Rose was highly recruited out of high school, but an NCAA investigation a year after he went pro proved that someone took his SAT for him.

Rose’s low high school grades compared to his high SAT score should have been enough for Calipari or the school to become suspicious immediately. Instead, it took the NCAA, which regulates thousands of athletes, two years to catch the wrong doing.

The Rose/Calipari scandal by itself is enough reason for the NCAA to change its policies to punish coaches instead of schools.

Why won’t anyone act on these sporting crimes? I know why. We’re too entertained to care.