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Super Star
Everyone's reality is a little different from everyone else's, right? What I see when I look in the mirror in the morning is not necessarily the same as what the people I encounter on the street see, unless of course they too see Brad Pitt's better looking brother who is not so much aging as maturing gracefully.
Several people have been kind enough to dispel that image in comments on my blog, usually while at the same time noting the picture in the upper right side of my blog page is a study in contrasts - me playing the part of Frankenstein's monster and my granddaughter the role of Mona Lisa. Often these comments are accompanied by questions about my intelligence and occasionally even my manhood.
To put it another way, it's been said that everyone is the star of their own personal movie, and as such may feel the need to occasionally alter the script a little. But Kevin Hart, a senior offensive lineman for Fernley High School in Fernley, Nevada, has stepped up his game and taken his personal movie to a whole new level.
Last Friday, in a ceremony in front of a packed house in the Fernley High gym, as well as in front of two television stations and a local newspaper reporter, Hart announced he had decided to accept a scholarship to play football at Cal, choosing the Golden Bears over Oregon in part because of the personal interest shown in him by Cal Head Coach Jeff Tedford.
It's a heartwarming story of a small town kid making good that almost seems too good to be true. Well, as it turns out, it wasn't true. None of it. Not the offer of a scholarship from the University of California, not the personal interest of the head coach, who admitted to the Associated Press he didn't know Hart and certainly had never recruited him, and not the dumping of the poor Oregon Ducks, whose coach, Mike Bellotti, recovered from his disappointment in losing out on Kevin Hart to admit he had never heard of him either.
Under questioning less than a day after making his grand but false announcement, Hart claimed he had been duped by a shady, anonymous promoter named "Kevin Riley," possibly from Las Vegas, when the news came out that there was no scholarship offer.
Turns out "Kevin Riley" was just as fictional as the Cal scholarship and the interest in Hart from Division I schools. On Wednesday, Kevin Hart finally came clean, apologizing to the colleges involved, his high school, and the authorities who investigated the situation for the trouble he had caused. "I wanted to play D-I ball more than anything. When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I made up what I wanted to be reality."
There are plenty of questions to go around, and they can be directed at more than just this kid. Didn't Hart's parents wonder why they had never met Cal coach Jeff Tedford when he had supposedly shown such a personal interest in their son?
And what about the Fernley High football coach Mark Hodges? I was never good enough at any sport in high school to be recruited by a college, but isn't it customary for recruiters to contact the young man's coach? Why didn't any supposedly responsible adults ask a few pointed questions of Kevin Hart before the situation spiraled totally out of control?
It's a sad and unsettling story of a confused young man with no guidance, but personally I think Kevin Hart might be on to something. Why can't we create our own reality?
I'd like to expound on this subject a little more, but I'm swamped and just don't have time for this. I'm being recruited by both Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine, and I'm having a hell of a time trying to decide who to write for, so you'll excuse me if I cut this short. I'll announce my decision soon.