Let’s start with my best wishes for a young guy from Goodland named Linkon Cure, who this past weekend “committed” to play football at K-State a year from now.
This was big news in certain underinformed circles, but, as I say, I should start with high hopes. I certainly hope he actually plays at K-State, gets on the field, catches a bunch of passes, helps the Cats win a bunch of games, breaks all the records. I hope it because I’m a K-State fan, and because he’s a Kansas kid, and because happy stories are better than bummers.
I’m not holding my breath. The evidence is stacked against it.
He’s the highest-rated “commitment” in the history of the program. That means the rating services that assign “stars” to rate the talent and/or potential of the high-school-aged kids have pegged him higher than any other guy to ever play football at K-State.
You want to know who ranks second on that list? Chris Boggas. Don’t remember him? I do, but for all the wrong reasons. He was an offensive lineman in the late 1990s who never saw the field. He was best-known here for getting arrested for stealing autographed baseballs from Bill Snyder’s house. I’m not kidding.
Third: Ayo Saba, a running back. He actually played a little. Fourth: Matt Boss. Never heard of him. Fifth: Jerome Janet, a receiver, I think. Not quite sure. Six: Nick Patton. Can’t remember.
Seven and eight are familiar: Josh Freeman, a quarterback who broke a bunch of records while on underachieving teams under Ron Prince, then went pro. And Avery Johnson, the current starter.
Nine: Lamark Brown, a receiver who did OK here for a couple of years. Ten: Jake Rubley, who transferred because he never played.
That’s your top 10. Two names stand out, and really only one has done much. Hoping for the best for young Mr. Johnson — and now for the Goodland Kid.
I have a theory about why this is, by the way. Heavily influenced by conversations on the topic with Bill Snyder. The theory is that kids who get really high rankings become convinced that those rankings actually matter, as if they have accomplished something. They get to announce their “commitment” in front of packed gyms, as if their choice of where to go to college is the pinnacle of their upbringing.
That tends to work against them, in the end, because the reality is that they haven’t accomplished anything. The only way for them to actually achieve at the college level is to grind it out, to work harder than everybody else, to improve more than anybody else on the roster – and the fact that they think they’re already at the top tends to dull the motivation necessary to do that.
You know who’s not on that list? Every single person whose name is on the wall at the stadium. Jordy Nelson: Nobody paid attention to a kid from Leonardvile. None of the Locketts were big-name recruits. Darren Sproles, well, anybody with eyes in their head could see he was really special, but he wasn’t highly-rated. Collin Klein? Nope. Not Mark Simoneau. Gary Spani? Pfftt. The rating services didn’t exist back then, but if they did you think they paid any attention to a kid from Manhattan High?
I hope for the best for young Mr. Cure. The problem is that he’s fighting an uphill battle, the heart of which is that he probably thinks he isn’t.
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