Lessons on Signing Day | For the love of the game

Published 5:41 pm Wednesday, February 1, 2012

With a handful of touted in-state recruits spurning the home state schools in 2012, there has been no shortage of conversation on the topic of fan interaction with local prep superstars.

Unlike some, I’m not of the belief that seniors in high school should be handled with “kid gloves” (don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean I condone death threats and other subhuman behavior either). But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some lessons to be learned.

Take the case of Kevin Hart.

In 2008, Hart held an announcement ceremony at Fernley High School in Nev., where he was the biggest thing to come through the program since, well, ever. As countless others before him and after, Hart chose a hat from a table, telling the world he would be headed to Cal-Berkeley to play for coach Jeff Tedford.

The only problem was, someone forgot to tell the Golden Bears.

Hart, though widely considered the top lineman prospect in Nevada in the 2008 class, had a sagging GPA and had never even taken the SAT. He had received the form letters sent out to hundreds of prep athletes and even duped his parents into letting him take a “recruiting” trip to Seattle to visit the University of Washington. But because of his shortcomings in the classroom, the recruiting process had in reality never even gotten off the ground.

After the folks in Berkeley got word of his faux-announcement the dominos of his deceit began to fall, leaving Hart in their wake.

“I was so down on myself,” Hart told ESPN’s Tom Friend in a 2009 story. “So college football was not on the list of places I’d go from here.”

But Merle Trueblood believed otherwise and knew there was a chance for Hart and others in his position to learn something.

“I saw the pain on the kid’s face,” the Feather River Athletic Director said when reached by telephone. “I’d hate to think my life was over at 18.”

Trueblood said he and former coach Tom Simi (now the head football coach at West Point Prep in New York) waited for months to get a reply from Hart, who was “pretty protected” after the story of his faux commitment had become national news. Eventually, after time helped rinse away the sour taste of his own dishonesty, Hart opened up to playing the game again and landed with Trueblood and Simi at Feather River College, a junior college in Quincy, Calif where he would overcome injuries, continued scholastic hardship and most importantly, one big mistake he made back home in Fernley.

In 2011, he was named a first-team All-California junior college lineman. On Wednesday, he will sign an official National Letter of Intent to play his final two years of collegiate football at Missouri Western State, a Division II school that finished with a 9-3 mark in football in 2011.

“He’s turned his whole life around,” Trueblood said. “It’s the most inspirational story I’ve ever heard or seen in my life.”

And it’s a great lesson, especially on signing day.

For the love of the game is a Reporter column written by sports reporter Josh Suman. Call Josh at 425-453-5045.