by Timothy Williams

Created on: June 25, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The OJ Mayo controversy should be a great case study for why there should never be a nationally-televised high school sporting event. (At least, not in any team sport where professionals are paid millions of dollars.)

When ESPN and other cable sports networks began the occasional coverage of a high school basketball game, they did so to program around one player. LeBron James was on national cable telecasts several times during his high school career. Last year I recall seeing a game on a cable network that featured Michael Jordan's sons. National press coverage of high school basketball players is commonplace now, and it's slowly spilling over to football. Those who follow college football closely know the names of a few of the nation's best high school football players.

Basketball, of course, has different age requirements for going pro than football does. An American basketball player needs only be one year removed from high school to make the NBA today, and that rule has only existed for two seasons now. The NFL has a requirement of three years out of high school before a player is eligible. Of course, college football and basketball aren't exactly anonymous leagues either. Major national attention is paid to collegiate football.

Suppose high school football were televised. The best players in the country would become celebrities on a national scale. Suddenly, sports talk radio is littered with long discussions of where young Suchandsuch is going to end up. Kids across the country are buying jerseys of their favorite players. Wonder what the danger is in so much extra attention?

Scouts from professional and college teams already go to high school sporting events. Representatives of big time Division I colleges will show up from time to time on Friday night across America. But these are not the only people who are paid to see an athlete's potential, and many others who get paid for that are likely to try and persuade the athlete.

Already, if the allegations against Mayo have any truth to them, "runners" are paid by sports agents to recruit and secretly fund prospects with high potential so that once the kid turns pro, they will choose that runner's boss as their agent. This starts in high school now. This is especially true of basketball, where a high school senior is only some eighteen months away from becoming a star in the NBA. Since players in high school now have national name recognition (like OJ Mayo had in his high school days), agents get a good idea

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