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Family and friends clapped wildly and TV cameras went live Wednesday morning as a high-school senior in Alabama took off his shirt to reveal a pair of very telling purple suspenders.
What I wish Kwon Alexander had been wearing underneath was a T-shirt that read: "Y'all are frauds."
We say, stay in school. We talk about valuing education. What we really value was on the table in front of Alexander — the logos of the football teams he was considering. We do not value the free education Alexander will get — at LSU, in this case — but rather the free labor he will provide.
And all you had to do was pay attention on Signing Day to know I am right.
What we did not do Wednesday was spend a single second glorifying that which we as Americans talk about valuing. We did not talk about Mariel Van Landingham, or really anybody with "game" like hers.
She is what is more commonly referred to as a five-star nerd. Don't worry, I asked if it was OK to use that phrasing.
"Oh certainly," Van Landingham said. "If you had seen me [Tuesday] night turning on CNN, just as the polls closed in Florida, you would definitely call me a nerd."
If Scout were to break down the senior from John Burroughs School in St. Louis, she'd be a blue-chipper in history and Latin, as well as theater and debate. And Van Landingham had big scholarship news as well recently. She was accepted to the University of Chicago, with scholarships to help defray what the school's website lists as a $58,955 per year price tag.
Did the media call for interviews? "No," she said.
Did Burroughs hold a press conference? "No," she said.
Did her family throw a party? "Not a party per se," she said. "Definitely, we treated ourselves to a nice dessert with dinner that night."
I embraced my not-so-inner nerd a long time ago. While I ran cross country and track, swam and played basketball during high school, I absolutely understood my only chance for a free ride was books, not balls — and there are more of us than there are of them.
And yet there we were again Wednesday celebrating what basically amounts to full-ride athletic scholarships with fanfare and hoopla while not doing likewise for kids who had the audacity to be good at band or trigonometry or Spanish.
I love high school football. I love college football. And I have become everything I used to hate because, God help me, I discovered myself checking my cell phone for DGB news in the Starbucks line.
If you do not know what those letters mean, I am proud of you.
I used to despise Signing Day as a made-for-TV adventure in narcissism, derisively opining that any enterprise based on divining college choices and future exploits of 17-year-old boys was an exercise for the perpetually bored. But when my Fox Family brothers at Scout delivered news that Springfield receiver Dorial Green-Beckham had signed with Mizzou — my alma mater — I cared.
Obviously, I am broken.
So I have a newfound appreciation for how fans get so wrapped up in this. I definitely understand why college coaches do. And I get why what Alexander and DGB and so many others have accomplished is worth celebrating.
A free education is a free education, and college football players certainly earn every penny they make and do not get from the university.
What I cannot seem to wrap my brain around is why high schools participate in the press conference hoopla aspect of Signing Day. I hear politicians and Americans talk about the value of education. I hear people in some circles talking about "those kids."
"Those kids only care about athletics," they said.
Here is the truth. Kids care about what we tell them — with our actions — is worth caring about. They care about what we care about. They follow our lead, and what we told them Wednesday was that the single best way to get a free education and to get lauded is sports.
If I am a freshman in high school right now, I am absolutely focusing on football over biology. I watched all those kids get scholarships and press conferences and publicity. There are teachers telling me academics is the way to go, but where is the proof? Where is the presser for Van Landingham?
If 40-yard times are worthy of praise, 4.0s should be, too. If an athletic scholarship is worthy of a Signing Day, so are academic ones. The nerds are putting in long hours in what amounts to their gyms — biology labs and libraries and computers.
What I propose is a National Academic Signing Day, a random Wednesday in May when kids accept non-sports scholarships and announce what universities they plan to attend. I mean, who is in charge at these schools where a free football ride justifies a party while a full ride to Princeton or Duke for excellence in writing or biology or mathematics does not? If we want to preach the value of education, we have to actually value it.
And I'd love to attend Van Landingham's presser, because I know what she would say to any 10-year-olds out there listening. I know because I asked.
"I think that one of the things that is really important is to find a group of friends who support you through your academic career," she said.
Find the nerds. We are everywhere.
And one day the rest of us will do more than say we value education and those who excel at it. How will we know when that day has arrived? Look for TLC going live to a press conference in a library where the next Mariel Van Landingham is announcing which scholarship she has decided to accept.
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