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College football recruiting stories ... you never let me down!

In a best-case scenario, the reporter is guilty of lying to his readers, hiring an unreliable stringer and being dumb enough to DM a kid a whiny message that was absolutely going to be published. In a worst-case scenario, he's out here making up quotes from recruits during the internet era that is 2021. Either way, yikes.
 
A couple of years ago, 247 Sports had on its list of top recruits from one state a guy who had drowned several months before what would have been his senior year. Yet people evidently pay for this site's expertise.
 
Next thing you know, someone will say Rick Bragg is the guy who sleeps in the hotel.
 
This is the ultimate story:

I can't remember when, but according to urban legend, Texas A&M recruiting reporter Taylor Hamm once followed then-recruit Steven Parker into a bathroom to get a scoop. It has been canonized on message boards, confirmed to be true and even immortalized during a clip in Madden 20. He was eventually fired by 247Sports.

 
I tried to do an "Interesting Recruiting Tales" story. I was thinking: Did a coach ever get scared on a recruiting visit to a ghetto area? Did any of them get robbed, mugged, lost, charged by a bull or alligator, drive into a snowbank?
I couldn't get anybody to talk about it. I was willing to take it all anonymously, don't tell me who or where, just what happened.
Just one funny comment about a Wyoming basketball recruit from SoCal. At the end of his visit, they took him back to the airport and it was locked. Airports aren't locked. Actually, the wind was so strong they couldn't open the door. When they finally did, they went to the boarding area and out the window they saw a plane coming in that was weaving back and forth in the wind. The recruit looked at the coach and asked if they could go to the train station instead.
 
This is a junior hockey recruiting story. In the 1980s, an NHL team in Western Canada was interested in drafting this kid in the first round. He lived in a remote rural area. The team's top scout went to pay the family a visit. Just the kid and his father were at home. They were watching TV with the sound off. The scout didn't pay any attention to what they were watching but sat with his back to the TV, facing the pair. The scout went into his pitch but noticed the kid and his dad were leaning over to look around him at the TV. Finally, the scout turned around to see what they were so wrapped up with. It was a porno. The team did draft the kid in the first round but he never made the NHL.
 
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This is a junior hockey recruiting story. In the 1980s, an NHL team in Western Canada was interested in drafting this kid in the first round. He lived in a remote rural area. The team's top scout went to pay the family a visit. Just the kid and his father were at home. They were watching TV with the sound off. The scout didn't pay any attention to what they were watching but sat with his back to the TV, facing the pair. The scout went into his pitch but noticed the kid and his dad were leaning over to look around him at the TV. Finally, the scout turned around to see what they were so wrapped up with. It was a porno. The team did draft the kid in the first round but he never made the NHL.
"That reminds me, I was coaching in Omaha in 1948 and Eddie Shore sends me this guy who's a terrible masturbator. Couldn't control himself. He would get deliberate penalities so he could get all by himself in the penalty box, and damned if he wouldn't, you know..."
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LOL
 

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