Would you trust the word of a high schooler?

Either would I, especially after being played for a fool.
Apparently enough people in Fernley, NV, believed Fernley High School senior Kevin Hart to come away looking like they'd just been duped into buying a bridge.
Last week, Hart announced in front of the entire student assembly, during a formal school ceremony in his honor, that he was accepting a full-ride scholarship to play Division I college football for the University of California, Berkley.
The event was significant, because Hart was supposed to be the first FHS student athlete to receive a full-ride athletic scholarship to a Division I school.
The problem was that Hart didn't receive a scholarship offer from Cal. In fact, he never received a scholarship offer from any Division I program, much less from any other school.
After an official investigation was launched by the Lyon County Sheriff's Office, it turns out that Hart had made the whole thing up himself.
Hart fabricated his story, because he wanted to make his dream of playing Division I college football a reality; even if it was only in his own mind. And he apparently was willing to drag his family, coach, school and community through the mud just to satisfy his own pre-occupation with something that wasn't.
In all fairness to the kid, he is just a teenager: immature and capable of doing anything stupid.
I should know.
When I was 17 years old, I shoved a 12-pound shot put into my mouth and tried to take a bite out of it, because I was angry. Major reconstructive dental surgery and about $1,500 later, I learned that teeth were not meant to bite into iron. I am lucky to still have a pair of front teeth and parents who love me. Other than a lot of contrite shame and embarrassment, though, the episode passed and I was able to move on with my life sans further consequence.
Unfortunately for Hart, his little stunt here may cost him any chance whatsoever of playing football beyond high school, and it might even prevent him from obtaining any type of gainful employment in the area.
Now that everybody within about a million square miles knows what he did, who can possibly trust him within three time zones?
I'm sorry to say, Mr. Hart, but you may well end up paying for your hoax years down the road. Oh, maybe it won't be all that bad. I mean, people may eventually forget...after you've been stuck hefting boxes in a warehouse for 10 years.
Who knows? If you hadn't pulled your little stunt, you probably would have been able to find scholarships to smaller schools and likely play college football at one of those. Then again, perhaps you thought that anything less than Division I was below you.
Every year, thousands of high school athletes accept scholarships to small four-year colleges and even two-year junior colleges just to get a chance to continue playing their sport while getting a free education. It doesn't matter to them how big or important the school is. What's important is the chance to go to college and continue doing what they love to do.
Besides, many more small college athletes have to work their way up the ranks toward Division I. Most never get to the highest level, but those who do have earned it with a lot of blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice.
Have you ever heard of Rudy Ruettiger, perhaps the most famous Notre Dame football player in the past half-century? He wasn't a scholarship player. He wasn't even a starter, much less a bench warmer. Rudy spent four years struggling to survive on the practice squad, taking brutal hits, just so he could earn the right to suit up for one game. The effort and hard work he put into every practice earned him so much respect from all the other players that every team member went to bat for him in front of the coach, demanding that Rudy be allowed to suit up for the last game of his college career.
Rudy's story was so inspiring that Hollywood even made a movie about it. I suppose a film could be made about your story, too...perhaps something along the line of "Dumb and Dumbest."
I realize that nobody wants to settle for second-best where their dreams are concerned, Mr. Hart, but sometimes we have to go the long way around to reach our goals. Unfortunately, I doubt that any respectable post-secondary institution, from Division I to JC, would even consider you now, because you have demonstrated to everyone a serious lack of judgment and integrity.
Had you actually looked and applied for scholarships, instead of waiting and hoping for one to come to you, then perhaps you would not have been so desperate to realize a dream that you would make a complete fool of yourself.
But enough about the boy. I've chided him enough here. He did a stupid thing and he is going to reap the consequences.
But now, a word or two about the gullibility of everyone else involved here: How did a teenage kid manage to dupe his parents, friends, coach and school into believing that he had a bonafide scholarship?
I know from experience that any legitimate scholarship offer goes through the parents, the high school coach and/or athletic department, because we are dealing with minors here. If the kid had a real scholarship offer, the coach and the parents would have been among the first to know; probably even before the kid knew.
Strange that the alarm didn't go off in his coach's head. The little red light apparently didn't come on in his parents' heads, either, because they seemed equally surprised by the news of the faked scholarship. The parents should have suspected something was amiss when they never received any direct communication from the coaches recruiting their son.
Furthermore, what kind of news reporting would take the kid's story on face value without checking with the school athletic director (A.D.) or the coach first? I actually spent a year covering FHS and other Lyon County high schools for the area newspaper there. My first contacts would always be to the school first, then to the parents, followed by an interview with the kid. Both the school (the coach and/or the A.D.) and the parents would have been notified directly by the college coach recruiting their child that there was a scholarship offer on the table.
In fact, the schools would even submit press releases to me of students who had received formal letters of intent and official scholarship offers.
I don't know whether or not the news reporters verified the information with the school and the parents first. I'm unsure why they took this story for granted the way they did. But the information they got probably looked and/or sounded legitimate enough, so they picked up the story and ran with it...knee-deep into "oops."
Fernley High School ought to be ashamed, too, because it put on a great, big show for this kid, who, unbeknownst to anyone else apparently, was milking the attention for all that it was worth.
Why didn't the A.D. or even the kid's coach, for that matter, pick up the telephone and call the schools that were supposedly recruiting him? Wouldn't they want to know? Heck, wouldn't the coach want to speak with any prospective coaches interested in his player? Moreover, didn't it even cross the coach's mind that the recruiting coaches would want to speak with him? Didn't he find it the least bit strange that he never had any contact with the schools offering this kid scholarships?
Indeed, where were the school officials when all this was supposed to be happening?
Nevertheless, a lot of people came away with egg on their faces and looking like suckers who had just been had: the parents, coach, school and local news media.
But not the least of which is Hart himself, who will find it hard to look people in the eye from now on and convince them he's telling the truth.
Who is going to believe him?