Ohio State football star Billy Price was a refreshing oasis of candor within a brutal dessert of horrifying tedium at B1G Media Day. College football talking season gets more corporatized and dumbed further down every summer, so when someone like Price comes along, it’s glorious. The OG was the highlight of Media Day, and you don’t need to be a Buckeyes fan to enjoy this audio snippet from his session embedded below.
Price opens by discussing how and why football players are crazy before getting into what was changed in the world of recruiting now. Price tells it exactly like it is, about how the amount of hype that accompanies recruits these days gives players an inflated sense of talent, ability and self-worth.
Which leads to complacency, or since we’re on the topic of Ohio State football, “apathy, apathy, avoid it like the plaque,” the legendary Woody Hayes once said.
“Don’t wear your high heels” and “don’t wear your Louies (Louis Vuitton)” Price says, in reference to the diva kind of attitude and work ethic that sometimes emerges. The diva behavior is a natural by product of course, when you have numerous outlets writing you up as the second coming, and social media hangers-on fawning all over you, despite not having actually accomplished anything yet.
Price knows from experience, as he points the finger at himself too, telling the story of a time early in his career that he had to be pushed. It was former Ohio State football star Taylor Decker, who had to call him and say, hey get your butt down here you have work to do to get better.
So how did we get here, with all the silliness over recruiting? Why is recruiting a spectacle now that everyone seems to be overreacting to at every opportunity? Some of it is social media, which amplifies everything, even the minutia. You can’t help but get a big head if you have online acolytes at every turn.
The bigger component though is the explosion of recruiting services, with team focused message boards and news sites that cater to one team and one team only. They are a profitable business that get most of their clicks from recruiting stories, rumors and over-analysis of what should be still be regarded as banal. However, if you only write about one team all the time, you run out of material pretty fast, and you got to fill space with something, and whatever that something is you overhype it.
Of course, this kids are going to see their egos swell from it. Overall, it’s a very recent phenomenon that is extremely unhealthy for the game.
Anyway, enjoy the audio. We didn’t transcribe any quotes because that doesn’t do it justice, really.
The #2 Buckeyes open the season tonight at Indiana, in what is no doubt the biggest
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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