Play Their Hearts Out

George Dohrmann from Sports Illustrated has a new book out, Play Their Hearts Out, which is apparently pretty eye-opening about the way colleges and shoe companies are herding kids through their basketball machines, exploiting them and then spitting them out as they see fit in what has pretty much become the main modus operandi of the NCAA. It actually sounds too depressing to read. An interesting note from this article on how much the importance of a high school career has diminished in the face of camps, AAU tourneys etc:

Twenty years ago, college basketball scholarships were handed out largely based on an athlete's play for his high school. Now, national tournaments featuring traveling teams have eclipsed the high school game.

That makes me sad. That means that no college is gonna care as much about my holding Holland Fisher to 38 points (only 14 above his season average!) as they would've 20 years ago. Of course, conversely, they wouldn't hafta hear about The Greatest Walk of All Time. But it also means the end of really cool shit like The Ballad of Danny Heater.