David Sills V was 9 years old when his dad really began to believe that his son might have special talents. At the age when boys are riding bikes and playing little league baseball, Sills was named top quarterback at a week-long, summer Philadelphia Eagles' football camp. "That kinda showed I wasn't just some crazy dad who thought his kid was better than he is," said David Sills IV, who played cornerback for the Virginia Military Institute. The following summer, the Sills family was in the market for a QB guru to take Sills to the next level. At the time, Steve Clarkson, who had tutored Ben Roethlisberger, was training USC Heisman winner Matt Leinert for the NFL draft when he started getting calls from Sills IV. "I called him six or seven times, left messages, but he never answered or called me back," Sills IV said. On the other side, Clarkson didn't know what to make of this dad from Delaware asking him to work out his pre-adolescent son. "But [Sills IV] was persistent," Clarkson said. "At a certain point, it was like, he really wants this to happenClarkson finally relented. He told Sills IV they could come to Pasadena after the draft, and he'd give Sills a look. "He had this attitude of, 'Yeah, sure, I'll take your money,'" Sills IV said. Clarkson still believed Sills was too young after the first session. "I thought, 'We'll do one more workout, and I'll tell them to come back in five years,'" he said. But that next session, Sills dazzled with a natural throwing motion and an arm strength that defied his age. Clarkson had never seen anything like it. Sills wowed Clarkson even more in the ensuing days, displaying an uncanny knack for understanding defensive coverages. "This was not normal," Clarkson
John-Michael Liles Jersey said. "I started to rethink, 'How young is too young?'" After later visiting the family in Delaware, Clarkson agreed to take on, by far, the youngest client he'd ever had. Sills was 10 years oldLane Kiffin entered the picture three years later. Clarkson was in Miami for Super Bowl XLIV, and Kiffin had just left Tennessee for USC. Clarkson called, and at the end of their conversation, asked if Kiffin would watch a YouTube clip. "No explanation given," Clarkson said. "Just asked his opinion." "I thought I was looking at a 10th or 11th grader," Kiffin recalled, in a phone interview about Sills with ESPN.com. As impressed as he was, Kiffin couldn't figure out why Sills was so skinny. "That's because he's 13," Clarkson told him, prompting an expletive of disbelief from Kiffin. "He just seemed so far advanced for a kid that age," Kiffin said. "It just seemed if he stayed on that track, he was going to be an elite kid, an elite player. If the kid kept growing, he could end up being as big as [USC Heisman winner] Carson Palmer, who we'd had a few years before." Putting aside the prudence of evaluating a quarterback off a single YouTube video, it wasn't - and still isn't - against the rules to offer a middle-schooler. But it certainly was taboo. An unspoken rule of recruiting. It didn't take long, however, for the notion to pop into Kiffin's head. In a follow-up phone
http://www.officialhurricanesproshop.com/Jordan_Staal_Jerseycall that same day, Kiffin broached Clarkson with the idea of offering Sills a scholarship. "Of course, I know you're going to be offering him when he's a junior," Clarkson joked back. "No," Kiffin retorted. "I mean like right now!" "We thought about [Sills' age]," Kiffin said. "At the same time, we had never seen anybody look like that. ... We thought he could be a great quarterback." By that time, Sills had already fallen in love with USC. Working out with Clarkson in California, he had gotten to meet Trojans quarterbacks Leinart, Matt Cassel and Matt Barkley. "His childhood dream was to go to USC," Clarkson said. The Sills family discussed the offer. That same evening, they called Kiffin, and Sills committed. "His opinion
Julien Gauthier Womens Jersey kind of was, 'That's where I'd want to go anyway, so why wait?'" Sills IV said. "But we didn't know anything about football recruiting. Being as na?ve as we were, we just said, if that's where you want to go, sign up. "Then the world decided to have an opinionAt a Super Bowl party, Clarkson tipped off ESPN's Shelley Smith about the commitment. Soon, the news was on the ESPN crawl, and before long, seemingly everywhere else. Overnight, Sills became a household name. Soon, the hot takes followed: Why would Kiffin do this? How could the parents allow it? Was Sills really this good? "It just went viral," Clarkson said. "I'm walking down radio row the week of the Super Bowl, and the whole row is talking about, not the Super Bowl, but about this 13-year-old accepting an offer from USC. It took off like a wildfire. It went crazy." As crazy as it got, Sills IV said his son never wavered. "What the media, TV, radio said about him, it never fazed him," he said. "Didn't change him, didn't change who he thought
Justin Faulk Youth Jersey he was." But just as Sills' fame was taking off, his quarterback shine began to lose luster
