Yesterday, I was awoken by a strange call. I honestly don't know why I pick up the phone when I have been ignoring it for years. Anyways, I was half in and out of sleep and my phone rang, I looked at it and it even showed a name, like it was someone in my contacts list. This made me answer it thinking it was an old acquaintance or friend I had forgotten. The guy on the phone said he was a representative for NCSA, which is the Next College Student Athlete. He quickly mentioned he worked for a recruiting firm and they were interested in helping my son get to the next level to play football in college. My "spidey" senses quickly felt like "this jackass is going to ask me for money in the next 5 minutes." He did not, even when I asked him if he was fucking with me to try and scam some money. He kind of laughed and said no, he was real. We talked for maybe 15-20 minutes about Javalina, what he has done, his dimensions, his scholastic achievements, and just to get to know him, at least on paper. He said everything sounded good and he didn't see any red flags to stop the process at this point. He wanted to schedule a zoom session with both parents and the athlete, which I told him was only possible on the weekend when Wife is in town. At this point, we have a tentative meeting for Saturday at 1:00pm.
At this point, I know nothing about this outfit, so my first thing after telling Javalina, Wife and my mom was to get on Google and look them up. They are tricky in using NCSA, which I thought was like NCAA, standing for National Collegiate blah blah, but when I looked them up it was Next College blah blah... I guess I get it, it makes it seem like they belong together in an official capacity. It is a real organization, the guy on the phone did send me an e-mail and it lead me to a website where I started a new account to upload all sorts of information that supposedly, in the future, college coaches can look through to consider him, including game tape, grades, stats and anything else that might be relevant. Of course the catch is that it does cost money which I find a little annoying, I mean not to be disrespectful, but how do all the "poor" kids without parents with extra money manage to get on college teams do it? I guess when you are on that next level, they come looking for you. I still don't know if Javalina will be anything special on the field, as a lineman, it is hard to gauge, it's not like he has so many touchdowns or yards run per game.
Then I talked to my brother and he gave me a little perspective. Like he said "if your kid really is into football and he wants to play, you do whatever you can. I spend over $2500 a year on cheerleader outfits for Mija and I won't get that back, but it is for your kid plus it is only money. $500-$2000 is nothing if it means a scholarship." I get what he was saying and I mostly agree, but getting Wife to part with that kind of money is not going to be easy right now that we have been trying to eliminate all of our credit card debts. We will at least listen, my boy does have three more years before he goes off to college, so there is no immediate rush, but we can't wait forever either.
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