What did you do when you were 13? You were probably worried about getting through your last year of middle school and entering the “big boy” known as high school. However, for seventh grader David Sills of Bear, Delaware, his future forecast is way different than most students his age. USC offered Sills a football scholarship and this week he verbally committed to USC’s football program for the quarterback position for the year 2015. No, you did not misread that, a 13-year-old seventh grader already committed to college. As Kevin McGuire of the Los Angeles Examiner best put it “the fact that Sills has pledged his allegiance to a college program before his body has fully developed and his voice has finished cracking… is alarming.”

To the average person, this might just seem absolutely ludicrous. However, as a USC student I think it is important to recognize the importance of acquiring recruits for the football program. Recently, USC hired Lane Kiffin to replace our old coach Pete Carroll who moved to the Seattle Seahawks. While, I will miss the Carroll era given that was the USC football I grew up with, it is an established fact that Kiffin has great access to future recruits. Signing the top recruits is crucial to guarantee a successful football program. In fact, Sills’ current coach, Steve Clarkson, was the former coach of our current quarterback star Matt Barkley.  It may also be worth noting that our rival, UCLA, sent Sills a questionnaire two years ago. While the idea of recruiting a seventh grader may seem a bit absurd to the general public, in the eyes of a football coach it makes logical sense.

— By Nicole Stockdale, USC