How far will athletes go in pursuit of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Every now and then I shed a tear for the youth of Illinois.

The old man in me wonders what we’re doing to our teen athletes while helicopter parenting and obsessing over college scholarships and (now) NIL money opportunities.

Then I look at what’s happening in other states, and my concerns vanish. Because if you think it’s bad here, it’s flat-out bonkers beyond our borders.

The last couple weeks I’ve written on the public vs. private school debate in IHSA sports, specifically referencing how states like Alabama and Nevada have approached the hot-button issue.

We’re drifting away from that debate this week and toward a different topic in the sports landscape of other states. The Wall Street Journal in recent months took an interesting look at the money being hunted by high schoolers and younger athletes.

Frankly, it’s scary.

According to the Journal, Florida officials have registered more than 7,000 athletic transfers in this school year alone. As shocking as that sounds, it’s only about 1,000 more transfers than they saw last school year.

With friendly transfer rules, and with school choice a priority for Florida legislators, athletes are free to move around pretty much at will. The Journal article pointed to a high school sophomore football player who’d already transferred twice, chose a different school for his junior year and moved again before that season ended.

In the current era of exploding financial opportunities through NIL — not to mention the trickle-down effect of open transfer rules in college — it’s no surprise high school athletes are trying to take advantage.

For this particular Florida teen, a star wide receiver, the school hopping paid off. He committed to LSU, which has produced NFL receivers such as Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson and Malik Nabers in addition to recent Bears third-round draft pick Zavion Thomas.

More importantly, as far as this Florida athlete is concerned, is the tens of millions of dollars LSU budgets for its football players. That’s what it’s all about in today’s world.

Can’t say I blame families, whether they’re in Florida or Illinois, for chasing life-altering wealth. In the olden days (before 2021 when NIL became a thing), it was all about doing everything possible for a college scholarship.

Boy, does that seem like an afterthought for today’s top athletes eyeing seven-figure cash payments from colleges.

The WSJ also wrote about parents who hold back their children a year in school so they’ll be bigger and more mature heading into their pivotal high school years.

In search of NIL gold at the end of the rainbow, one dad in California spent $20,000 for his son to repeat eighth grade at a sports academy. That’s where priorities stand today, “reclassifying” in hopes of becoming one of the precious few to cash in.

Is this kind of thing happening in Illinois? Probably. And it’s only going to get worse as the guardrails provided by governing bodies gradually fade away.

You don’t have to be an old man to see trouble on the horizon.