For every high-profile Nerlens Noel that hits the barbershop, etches a crisp school logo in the back of a high-top fade and takes his talents to college via ESPN, countless pairs of wishful eyes are glued to the television with the hopes of swapping places with one of America's top prep recruits. The underdogs.

It was 1999. I sat in the library at Chico Senior High School during third period Monday through Friday as a “library aide.” My duties consisted of sliding the sections of the day’s newspaper into the bamboo scroll and placing it in the rack for students and faculty to read, replacing books according to catalog number, and meticulously searching the internet using Netscape or Lycos for anything and everything to do with high school football recruiting. Anything.