Congrats to Chaparral’s Davonte Neal for choosing a college. For kids and families it’s often a difficult, stressful decision with great importance beyond athletics, let alone when every BCS school in the country is in pursuit.

Congrats to everyone else in Arizona and beyond, who should no longer have to listen to, (especially) read about, or hear from Luke Neal ever again.

Somewhere in South Bend, Ind., Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly might be asking for a four-year “sabbatical.”

The Neals themselves are what turned Davonte’s dog-and-pony-show of a college announcement Tuesday morning into a viral, national sham.

The father-son tandem (especially dad) and the hundreds like it that happen across the country every year, is why it’s never worth caring about recruiting: Rumors, gossip and for the so-called “elite,” an inflated sense of self-worth that only manifests itself into an ego and narcissism which grows larger by the tweet/blog/update.

How did all this surveillance become so important? It’s not, and on Tuesday, the Neals’ bubble popped.

This sham was planted years ago. Davonte was an athletic standout long before high school, and Luke was there to promote and self-congratulate, all the while rumors and innuendo surrounded him “influencing” other kids to join his personal training business and Davonte’s high schools (Laveen Cesar Chavez and then Chaparral). They lived in Mountain Pointe’s boundaries, open-enrolled at Chavez, and, after the football program was put on probation by the AIA for violations, Davonte and dad jumped ship to Chaparral.

Joined at the hip were media outlets chronicling Luke’s and Davonte’s every inhale, exhale, dog walk, grocery store trip and sighting at the local “Sonic” drive-thru window for the last 18 months. To put it mildly, this whole quasi-public relations racket was nauseating.

The circus in full-stomp mode for two years, Tuesday’s ending was kind of fitting. More than 600 kids were taken out of their Kyrene de la Esperanza Elementary School classes, sat on the cafeteria floor and waited for Neal, an “alum” of the elementary school, to choose his college, answer questions and help kids understand what you can achieve in life.

This was supposed to qualify as a pomp-and-circumstance show of how accountability, maturation and humility can lead to great things.

This message didn’t get in one ear and out the other with a bunch of first-, second-, third- and fourth-graders. It never got in their ear. Nothing did. So after nearly an hour of waiting for somebody affiliated with the Neal’s to either show up or say something, the school gave up and sent its kids back to class.

Four hours later at the school, Notre Dame it was. Neal later went to the classrooms and apologized for his morning M.I.A., and whatever the reason(s) behind it are inconsequential.
You can call it a first step in the image-recovery process, but hardly a leap. Davonte helped plan out this charade, agreed to be there, and then whiffed on his own attendance for an hour of grandiose self-promotion.

Thankfully, kids weren’t taken out of class a second time. It wouldn’t have served them well later in life, anyway, at least not coming from the mouths it was supposed to.

After a failed attempt to be something of a role model to kids who couldn’t care less where Davonte Neal goes to school, the children came out winners in all this: They got out of class for 30 minutes.

Thanks for the life lessons, Luke. We’ve all learned plenty. Your megaphone has been permanently revoked.

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