MVN - Most Valuable Network

The Kevin Hart Saga Just Got Even More Bizarre

As you may remember, we recently mentioned an extremely odd story out of the small town of Fernley, Nevada. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: Kevin Hart, a high school offensive lineman, recently held a much-publicized press conference to announce his commitment to the University of California. He said his telephone conversations with Cal coach Jeff Tedford convinced him to make the decision to suit up for the Golden Bears.

Here’s the problem: Tedford never talked to Hart. And the university had no records of any contact with the kid. To make matters worse, no coaches of representatives from Oregon had ever contacted Hart, either (Oregon was another school that supposedly “recruited” the offensive lineman).

According to reports, Hart had been the victim of a cruel prank in which someone had impersonated Tedford and other school officials, tricking the high-schooler into thinking he was being recruited by some big-name schools.

Think that’s messed up? Well, things just got even more bizarre:

Hart claims, in a report taken Saturday by the LCSD, that a Kevin Riley falsely represented himself as a recruiter — a middle man to big-time college football programs — and led the 6-foot-5, 290-pounder and his family to believe there were scholarship offers available when there were none.

“It’s an ongoing investigation but we have no suspect at this point and no info to identify a suspect,” [Deputy Dan] Lynch said.

The purported recruiter coincidentally has the same name as a Cal redshirt freshman quarterback, but the sheriff’s department does not know of a connection between the Cal quarterback and the recruiter.

This is getting too weird, and now there are even more unanswered questions. What did this guy have against Hart? Why did he use the name of the Cal quarterback? Didn’t the family realize there was something fishy about the situation? Should be interesting to see how this story unfolds.

On another note, The Wizard of Odds uncovered a fake MySpace page for Hart…and from the looks of that site, it certainly seems like Hart was the victim of cyber bullying. Some comments on the page refer to him as Kevin “The Bitch” Hart, there are several videos and pictures of Fat Bastard, and the page is covered with Snickers bars. Looks a helluva lot like bullying to me, even if it was meant to be a joke.

Here’s what the “About Me” section of the page says:

My name is Kevin. I was a 2nd team all state guard in Nevada. I love to eat, ALOT. Im gonna go to a D1 college as soon as I find one that doesn’t look at your GPA.

Man, I’m feeling really bad for this kid. His dreams of getting a scholarship to a division one school were shattered, and it appears as if he goes to school with a bunch of fake Myspace-creating asswipes. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this story.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.