Another athlete knew he wanted to take his talents to the collegiate level even earlier.
“I knew I wanted to play college ball when I was 9,” he said. “But it became realistic when I was about 12.”
Realizing he had a future in sports at such an early age garnered a great deal of (sometimes unwanted) attention.
“I remember coaches coming up to me offering food, offering me gear. Calling me when they aren’t supposed to be calling”, he said. “It’s real dirty. They fly out to see your family. They are always around, calling your phone non-stop.”
Offers coming in from multiple colleges to a top-ranking national high school athlete can prove irresistible for many a player. But this athlete states that his family never pressured him to take anything.
“I have morals. I was raised a different way. I know that if I work hard, eventually I will be getting all those things on my own. That’s the way I looked at it, I never looked for any handouts."
He did acknowledge, however, that certain players truly do need the money, and are sometimes easily tempted into the position of accepting perks.
“A lot of guys come from poverty and then they get around players with money,” he explained, “and they start wanting those things.”
Once he ultimately decided upon USC as his college of choice, he soon began noticing the negative attention directed at the school for its alleged questionable recruiting practices.
“Reporters are always on USC’s case no matter what USC does,” he said. “You never hear dirty things about UCLA. There are a lot of dirty things going on in a lot of different places that I know personally.”
As a top “clean” athlete throughout both his high school and collegiate recruiting process, he says people still assumed that he was taking money and/or gifts.
“Even for me,” he stated, “people say ‘He is doing this and he’s doing that.’ And I’m here shaking my head, saying, Why can’t I just be a regular guy? Why do I have to take money? It’s hard. You always have to think who is watching.”
He says even his teammates have sometimes accused him of succumbing to enticements of money and gifts.
“My teammates saw me coming with a new watch. It was a cheap watch, a fake watch, but the way I carried myself made them think that I was taking money, or taking bribes.”
He surmises that a lot of people speculate without actually having concrete facts.
“I know a bunch of guys are coming up to me saying ‘Are you taking some money, where’d you get that nice shirt or nice jeans?’ And I think, what I can get some nice clothes or nice jeans on sale?”
But he says that he has a good idea when someone signs an agent early or is taking money.
“You have to understand the cycle. Anytime a player is taking money you always wonder why they leave early and declare so fast. You wonder why he is leaving on such short terms."
This athlete states that the support from his family has been very important, in avoiding the sometimes overwhelming temptations that come from recruiting colleges and sports agencies. He says that agents often come to his family offering gifts that are sometimes hard to turn down.
“I just tell (my family) to stay humble, and that we don’t need that stuff right now. I’m in school, and I’m happy right now. That lifestyle will come, just be patient, we don’t need that stuff, we’ve got each other. “
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