At this rate, we’ll be measuring wingspan in the womb within a matter of years. And it will be sanctioned by the NCAA. From the AP:

Giving in to the young-and-younger movement in college basketball recruiting, the NCAA has decreed that seventh-graders are now officially classified as prospects.

The organization voted Thursday to change the definition of a prospect from ninth grade to seventh grade — for men’s basketball only — to nip a trend in which some college coaches were working at private, elite camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-graders. The NCAA couldn’t regulate those camps because those youngsters fell below the current cutoff.

“It’s a little scary only because — we talked about this — where does it stop?” said Joe D’Antonio, chairman of the 31-member Division I Legislative Council, which approved the change during a two-day meeting at the NCAA Convention. “The fact that we’ve got to this point is really just a sign of the times.”

Schools had expressed concern that the younger-age elite camps whether giving participating coaches a recruiting advantage, pressuring other coaches to start their own camps.

“The need to nip that in the bud was overwhelming,” said Steve Mallonee, the NCAA’s managing director of academic and membership affairs.

While men’s basketball is the only sport affected, D’Antonio said he could envision future discussions on lowering the limit for other sports, notably football.

Fictional recruiting guide for the Class of 2014: Young Johnny Martin enjoys video games and going out for pizza after basketball. He struggles at times with long division and doesn’t like his parents’ stance on PG-13 movies. He could eventually be anywhere from 5-foot-7 to 6-foot-10. Nobody is really sure yet. He is currently being recruited by UCLA, Kansas, Florida and UConn. Unnamed sources have indicated one school even went so far as to woo him with the promise of a new bicycle. Those same sources say Kelvin Sampson has been texting him daily.

Really, it’s a bit much, isn’t it? Then again, we also enjoyed this nugget near the end of the same story, which mentioned several measures discussed by the D-I council:

In an era in which students are taking many courses online, the council wasn’t ready to allow athletes to do the same. Proposals to allow athletes to take online courses at other schools were defeated, as was a proposal to allow athletes to take all of their courses online at their own school. The council did leave open the possibility of an April vote that would allow athletes to take up to 50 percent of their courses online at their own school.

“There are perception concerns,” D’Antoni said, “that if you have an individual who is a high-profile student-athlete who’s taking nothing but nontraditional courses and never setting foot on campus, how is that going to be looked at by the general public?”

Um, we would have to imagine that would be looked at with great suspicion by the general public. Then again, if such a thing were allowed, and Al Gore had invented the Internet* a little sooner, there might still be a Final Four banner hanging at Williams Arena.

*We know he didn’t really make that claim and that his words were taken out of context. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to say.

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