College sports' recruiting seems like a Wild West mess, with no effective sheriff in sight.

Case in point: USC football coach Lane Kiffin offered a scholarship to a 13-year-old quarterback earlier this year. “Quarterback chooses USC, will pick middle school later. Film at 11.”

More and more, men's basketball coaches are offering scholarships to players before their first year of high school.

The NCAA is considering a way to manage the unmanageable, to put in a rule that can't be policed, to tempt coaches to skim the gray area between right and wrong, between good and bad, between being patient and offering a 13-year-old a scholarship.

The Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet proposed that the NCAA pass a rule that says coaches can't offer scholarships to recruits until July 1 before their senior year in high school.

It sounds nice.

It's unenforceable.

Coaches won't back off the young recruits. (Incidentally, some of those college hoops coaches will be in town this week for a national tournament of eighth- to 11th-graders at Spiece Fieldhouse.)

The arms race has escalated to the point where there's no turning back. True, most aren't going as far as Kiffin in trying to lock up players for six years down the road. But anyone who has any hope of competing at a high level must get in on players as early as possible. The inside track starts long before the boys hoops players start shaving and filling out their adult bodies, not to mention their minds.

No one is exempt from taking risks on scholarship offers. Purdue coach Matt Painter has extended offers to Fort Wayne players such as South Side junior Rapheal Davis, Northrop sophomore Bryson Scott and Harding sophomore V.J. Beachem.

Good young players, no question. Big Ten standouts? Maybe Painter can predict the future this early. Given his success, I'm not going to argue. But my intuition tells me it's a crapshoot taking a chance on a player after even one year in high school, superstars like Deshaun Thomas being the exception.

In theory, I'm in favor of the proposed rule on limiting those offers until players complete their junior seasons. In practice, it'd be pointless.

I'm sure every ethical coach out there would refrain from “officially” offering an early scholarship and breaking the potential rule. But there are so many ways around that potential rule that enforcement would be futile.

Instead of Painter – to use a specific case for a general point – being upfront and letting Scott and Beachem know they have a scholarship offer on the table, he would have to play semantics. He'd have to say something like, “If it were within NCAA rules to offer a scholarship, I would.” Or maybe “As soon as July 1 hits, I'll definitely be calling you with an offer.”

So offers under that rules proposal would be implicit, and nothing would change.

Is it ridiculous for a college coach to recruit a 13- or 14-year-old? Of course it is. Imagine how it feels for the coach – many of them 35 to 50 years old – to kiss up to a kid barely breaking into acne? Major college coaches are well-paid for this rather awkward interaction, but it's awkward nonetheless.

Finding these young players is why AAU basketball is so popular, and part of the reason why Spiece Fieldhouse and the Gym Rats organization are a big draw and big success. Summertime is when coaches have the chance to scout the next wave of players. They can't come to high school games (or seventh-grade games) when they're in season.

The National Association of Basketball Coaches has recommended in the past that scholarship offers shouldn't be extended before a player finishes his or her sophomore season. Even that, if made into a rule, would be impossible to enforce.

The not-so-secret ugly secret is that scholarship offers are fairly flimsy prior to signing of a letter of intent. Coaches sometimes offer more scholarships than they have available. Sometimes, as signing times approach, that scholarship “offer” has expired.

As much as recruiting is a Wild West mess, there's no turning back. When it comes to controlling recruiting, the NCAA is as effective as Barney Fife. The threat of that one bullet in his pocket isn't much of a deterrent.