Prep Football

Where did all the big-time high school football talent go?

I bought the Street & Smith's College Football Yearbook for 2007 the other night, and among other things perused their list of the top high school football players in the nation.

San Diego County produced three entries. Three. Mind you, this is not a small list, like a first-team, second-team All-American sort of thing. No, there are probably 250 names. San Diego should have more than three.

The honored are El Camino WR Nelson Rosario, Mission Hills DL Jamaar Jarrett, and La Jolla Country Day K Travis Golla. Congratulations to each!

While prep football around the county remains very strong from top-to-bottom, this lack of big star-power continues a trend for the past few years. We're getting to the point now that we produce more basketball players.

So what's causing this? I can think of three reasons.

First, things like this go in cycles. Heck, it was weird enough for one school to produce Reggie Bush and Alex Smith at about the same time. Not to mention other schools in the same time-period putting out Scott White, Marcus Smith, Khalif Barnes, and Bobby Byrd, among others.

Second, a lot of players from the early-2000s in both football and baseball from around here didn't pan out when they moved on. I wonder if some of the major football schools that used to come in and snag some of our guys have backed off, and if the recruit ratings services are no longer sticking their necks out as far on our products. For example, we used to have a couple local kids starting for Big 10 teams. But Michigan CB Leon Hall, from Vista, was the last of a breed in 2006. I'm not even sure we have anyone on a Big 10 roster anymore. All the local players are strictly West Coast -- Pac-10, Mountain West, WAC -- these days.

Third, which a lot of people won't want to admit, but the gangs have simply won the tug-of-war with high school athletics. Look at what's become of Morse and Sweetwater, to begin with. Mt. Miguel, which draws from gang-plagued areas of Spring Valley, can't get anything together. In the North County, the sudden collapse of El Camino a few years ago is another example. In my day job, I'm seeing a number of North County kids drawn into gang violence who otherwise could have been fine athletes. It's a shame.