Earlier this week it was announced that 6′4″ Michael Avery out of Lake Sherwood, California, had committed to the University of Kentucky. No big deal, right? Wrong.

What is most surprising about Avery’s commitment to Billy Gillispie’s Kentucky basketball program is the fact that he has never even played a high school basketball game. Yes, the 6′4″ Avery is currently enrolled in the eighth grade at Ascension Lutheran School in Thousand Oaks, California.

Five years ago, Orange County native and eighth grader Taylor King stunned the entire nation by committing to enroll at UCLA. King’s commitment was the first in a trend of eighth graders and incoming high school freshmen committing to such big-time programs  as Kentucky, UCLA, and USC.

Nowadays, Avery’s commitment is no longer a surprise but is characteristic of a growing trend among middle school athletes. It is increasingly common to find college coaches soliciting commitments from eighth graders before they have even sunk a free throw against a high school opponent. Is this is a healthy trend?

I don’t think so.

In most circumstances, I don’t blame  parents for allowing these children to accept scholarship offers from Division One basketball programs. If Harvard promised to pay for your child’s education, you probably wouldn’t stop him from accepting their offer. Basketball scholarships are valued at up to $200,000 over the course of a four year college career. That’s a lot of money and making sure their child’s college education is taken care of when he is in the eighth grade is a big relief for many families.

However, it appears as if coaches are the ones to blame here. To some extent, I can understand why the coach of a mid-level program occasionally takes a chance on an early commitment from a prospect who he feels might develop into a high-caliber player. But when coaches at big-time programs like Kentucky and UCLA feel the need to become routinely involved in this “premature recruiting,” it signals that this has become a widely accepted practice. 

The Taylor King story demonstrates that fourteen is too young to make such an important decisions about where to attend college. King originally committed to UCLA but ended up decommitting and listening to offers from other schools. Although he eventually enrolled at Duke, he transferred to Villanova following a disappointing freshman season.

Although this trend of early commitment may benefit big time college basketball programs, it clearly is not a great idea for these young student athletes.

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