Todd May is glad he was a hot-shot basketball prospect 25 years ago and not today, especially when he views the hype and hyperbole surrounding Patrick Patterson, the West Virginia prep star who is supposed to announce his college choice next week. Over the last six months Patterson and his parents have squeezed this recruiting saga for all its worth in headlines, sound bites and message-board postings, while stringing along such national powers as UK, Duke and Florida.
May, a versatile 6-foot-8 standout at Virgie (shown in action at right), was Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball in 1982. He had Auburn, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest and UK recruiting him his senior year. “Back then you got a lot of phone calls from coaches, and I guess there was stuff written in the papers, but I didn’t pay much attention to it,” May said. “I do know that the longer you wait to make a decision, the worse it gets. It’s like feeding a monster. The media coverage wasn’t anything like it is now, though. ESPN was just getting going, and there wasn’t all this Internet stuff.”
May, who waited until April to sign with UK, said, “I guess there are pros and cons to the way it is now. Kids have the advantage of knowing what’s coming, more or less. But sometimes the media build somebody up as the next (Michael) Jordan, and then when they don’t pan out, the media destroys them. That’s sad in a way. Most kids don’t ask for that. They just want to play ball. Even what I went through, which was nothing like it is now, I didn’t like it. I was real shy back then.”
While looking through the Herald-Leader files, I came across a photo of May getting an award and a handshake from O.J. Simpson. It was taken in the spring of 1982 after May was named the top high school athlete in Kentucky. Hertz sponsored a “No. 1″ award and brought each of the state’s winners to New York, where they got a “grip and grin” from Simpson, the spokesman for the rental car company at the time. May has a copy of the photo boxed up somewhere. It may even be autographed. But Simpson’s star power has dimmed considerably, of course, so the photo will remain stashed away, along with May’s memories of being in the recruiting spotlight.
