small high schools in New York. Besides being a burden to taxpayers, small school districts are not conducive to grooming college football prospects. College coaches want to see how a 6-foot-5, 285-pound lineman stacks up against at least a 240- or 250-pound opponent. If that kind of specimen happens to attend a Class C or D school, he's probably wasting most Saturdays pancaking 175-pound opponents, which doesn't prove much.
I'm sure there are a number of other factors to cite, but the bottom line is that 19 major-college scholarships is a sorry number for a state this size.
This great Dane's no dog: Rush-Henrietta junior forward Dane Miller has Big East basketball in his future. He told the Democrat and Chronicle that he has given an oral commitment to Rutgers to attend in the fall of 2009.
Miller, who averages 20.5 points and 18 rebounds a game, can sign a binding letter of intent in November.
Nonsense continues: The Illinois High School Association is at it again, this time blocking newspapers from photographing the state cheerleading championships in Bloomington last weekend if photographers didn't sign releases forbidding them from selling reprints.
The money that newspapers make from selling reprints is so minimal that it's not even worth discussing. What's going on here is that the IHSA is trying to protect a commercial photographer that's doing a bunch of free work for the association on the side.
But when all is said and done, someone should be asking whether the IHSA really needs that work done in the first place. Are you telling me that in this era of high-quality digital photography they are not capable of shooting their own staff photos as well as grip-and-grin photos of the winners from the chess torunament and debate championships?
Extra points: Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN did the definitive wrap-up on the sad case of Kevin Hart, the Nevada schoolboy whose recruiting hoax was a national story this week. The most amusing aspect to the story may be the rah-rah comments of Cal fans upon the announcement last week that Hart was going to sign with the Bears. The way they were turning a non-entity into a football God is a reminder to believe no more than 75 percent of what gets posted on the Internet after being scrutinized by three editors and no more than 2 percent of what "basement boys" post in forums and chat rooms.
The New York State Public High School Athletic Association rolled out a much-needed redesign of its Web site this week. I didn't see any new features or material on the site, but the cleaner navigation and layout alone make it a success. . . . Look for the Timer Warner Cable system in your area to announce soon that they will show NYSPHSAA basketball tournament games from Glens Falls next month. The Rochester-area TWC system started promoting its coverage plans yesterday.
