First off, I want to send my regards and utmost congratulations to Perry Ellis and his family for his commitment to Kansas. Kansas fan or not, one will always have to love Perry Ellis.
The recruiting gods could not have asked for a more prepared and well-organized party the Ellis family had in place. Since his freshman year of high school, Perry has had a schedule regarding his recruitment, and the family stuck to it. I applaud them for that.
However, during the past four years, NO ONE really ever spoke to Perry via phone conversation. As many of you know, Perry’s mother, Fonda, handled all interviews, questions, rumors, etc. Sure, people can infer their own opinions about Mrs. Ellis and her interaction with the recruiting process.
But at the end of the day, Fonda Ellis did what was best for her son. Instead of Perry being swamped with interview requests and other media-related subjects, Fonda defended her son by taking a huge amount of pressure off his shoulders. In the meantime, Perry had the opportunity to concentrate on school, basketball, and the recruiting process.
The recruiting world needs more parents/guardians like Mrs. Fonda Ellis to ensure the natural well-being of these young men.
This brings me to my point. A VERY popular college basketball/recruiting writer had a series of tweets this afternoon that was very disturbing to me, as well as many other fans and recruiting-followers. [URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/GoodmanCBS”]CBS’s Jeff Goodman’s tweets[/URL] go as the following:
[URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/GoodmanCBS/status/116600195705344000″]Tweet 1[/URL]: I’ve never seen a player get more publicity than Perry Ellis. He can certainly thank his mother for that one.
[URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/GoodmanCBS/status/116609523376078848″]Tweet 2:[/URL] I honestly believe that Perry Ellis would have been ranked higher if she didn’t promote her son so much and talk to so many writers.
[URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/GoodmanCBS/status/116609700220514305″]Tweet 3[/URL]: I like Fonda Ellis, but I know that it rubbed some of the recruiting guys the wrong way & my gut says they dropped him a bit in rankings.
[URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/GoodmanCBS/status/116617046657204225″]Tweet 4[/URL]: [URL=”https://twitter.com/#%21/JennBates12″]@[B]JennBates12[/B][/URL] There’s a difference between protecting and promoting – and again, I like Fonda. She took involved mom to new level.
Parents, if this doesn’t make you cringe, then I’m not sure what will. Either way, this was totally uncalled for and just ridiculous from Mr. Goodman.
I don’t care who you are and what school you covered, if you asked Fonda Ellis for an interview with Perry, you would get it done. It may not be an automatic thing, but given time, Fonda would have some answers.
Whether you were the top dog at Scout or Rivals, or if you were piece of junk blog, you could have Perry Ellis information. But hey, I guess when the ‘big boys’ of the recruiting world lose their contact with a very popular recruit, they get mad.
I had an anonymous friend tweet this, and I felt it hit the nail right on the head:
[QUOTE]@fellisbbmom Is a great lady. Writers always want information about recruits – now they complain when they get it.[/QUOTE]
That says it all. Sometimes people get jealous because he or she isn’t the only person to know about an inside scoop of information.
As for the rankings tweet, I will say it nicely: [B]STUPID[/B]
If a person is in charge of ranking players, there can be no biased nature towards the recruit. If analysts are being biased, then why do we have rankings?
So does this mean that Shabazz Muhammad is ranked No. 1 because he stays closer to the big-name guys? I don’t think so.
But when it’s all said and done, it doesn’t matter where a player was ranked according to Rivals, Scout, etc. It’s all down to the college coaches.
Apparently there is something in Perry Ellis, because for four-plus years, the talented forward has had some of the top names in the basketball world chasing him: Bill Self (Kansas), John Calipari (Kentucky), Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Josh Pastner (Memphis), Frank Martin (Kansas State), and more.
If you ask me, if Perry is ranked in the thirties and he has these teams after him, I think someone may need to revise their rankings, no? But like I said, in the end, rankings do not matter. The coaches do. And each of these coaches and their assistants saw something in Perry Ellis.
Back to Fonda Ellis.
Sure, she emailed and tweeted every little thing that was published about her son. But can a parent not be proud for his or her child’s accomplishments?
Some may call it promoting and showing-off, but I call Mrs. Ellis’ actions acts of proud nature. There’s not many kids that carry a 4.0 GPA throughout high school. I would love to know how many top 100 kids have a GPA like that.
The point is, Fonda and her family interacted the way things should happen. You can’t ask for a nicer person in the world than Mrs. Ellis. Her top priority is her children, and she loves to watch them succeed in what they do best: perform well on the basketball court and have fun.
I want to thank Fonda for every interview she did with me, as well as all the player diary entries she helped prepare for us here on NOB.
I am as old as Perry, and she paid attention to me just the same as she did to Evan Daniels, Jeff Goodman, Jerry Meyer, Eric Bossi, and any other person that has chased their dreams to cover basketball recruiting.
There’s not much more you can ask.
So while everyone is saying, “Fonda Ellis over-publicized her son,” on the best day of Perry’s life thus far, just remember the family had to deal with the criticism.
Perry Ellis could go down as one of the best players to ever play at Kansas, and his main help in getting where he is today was none other than Fonda Ellis.
Congratulations, Ellis family.
