Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie is taking a pounding this week because he offered a scholarship to an 8th grader. Today’s piece in USA Today skews negative, and it seems like a hot topic that we’ll see Doug Gottlieb and Jay Bilas arguing over in a matter of hours. But let’s not castrate Gillispie for this - how soon we forget that a few years ago, UCLA’s Ben Howland offered a scholarship to an 8th grader named Taylor King. (He later changed his mind and went to Duke, only to transfer after one season to Villanova.) Besides Gillispie and Howland, it would be remiss of us not to mention USC’s Tim Floyd offering an 8th grader a scholarship last year. DePaul locked up a kid three weeks after he had completed 8th grade.

Let’s not act like Gillispie and Howland’s actions are having a corrosive influence on the sport - this kind of thing has been going on for years. Gonzaga snagged a promising recruit last year before the kid had begun his sophomore year in high school. (That article is tremendous - Steve Alford offered Jeff Horner a full ride to Iowa when Horner was a freshman. Arizona locked up current guard Nic Wise when he was 15.) It’s just where we are - you’ve got these recruiting buffoons putting out the lists of the best sixth graders on the planet, and coaches can’t help but look at that junk. (Shoe companies are also aware of those lists, apparently.) If you’re a college coach and there’s a 6-foot-5 middle schooler two states over … how can you not be mildly intrigued? It might sound harsh, but you wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t at least look into it. College hoops is fiercely competitive and at its core, big business. Blame the damn internet!

Of course, this doesn’t make the scholarship offers right. So first, blame goes to the internet, and second, to the clowns who put out any list of a player not in high school. Third is a tie between the AAU coaches and the shoe companies (they go hand in hand, anyway). But it’s not like these early verbals mean anything - the guess here is that most kids who get that much pub that early wind up to be busts, anyway. It goes to their head and they lose the desire to improve their game. (Insert story about Michael Jordan getting cut from his JV team here.)

This remind us of Louisville’s Derrick Caracter, who recently announced he was going to enter the NBA draft. Back in our newspaper days, local coaches raved repeatedly to us about this beastly 8th grader who already had the nickname Baby Shaq and was destined for greatness. Naturally, the accolades went to his head, he got lazy and his weight ballooned, and he had trouble just staying in school (at St. Patrick, the factor that churned out kids like Al Harrington and Sam Dalembert, among others). How he had the grades to get into Louisville, we’ll never know, but once there he underperformed, feuded with coaches and despite flashes of dominance, he never really panned out.

When you’re pursing 15-year-old 8th graders, caveat emptor.