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He's playing you for chumps. All of you. Bryce Brown is telling you to jump -- and you're asking, "How high?"

This high school senior, this 17-year-old kid, is holding a press conference on Monday to announce where he will play football in college.

Greg Little went through a whole charade before, finally, settling on North Carolina. (Getty Images)

And you'll pay attention.

The finger doesn't point only at you, either. It points at me, because my profession is just as guilty. Maybe more so, because we'll be there with cameras and tape recorders. When he names a college, we'll immediately relay the news via cell phone or wireless Internet connection. Whatever the speed, it won't be high-speed enough. Because this is important. This is urgent.

Bryce Brown is picking a college.

Gag me.

First of all, football recruiting is a crapshoot. Recruits, even the very best ones, often do not pan out. The top quarterback recruit in 2005, Ryan Perrilloux, held a news conference to announce he was going to LSU, noting that "I can come in and play next year" because the only players ahead of him were JaMarcus Russell ("struggled last year," Perrilloux said) and Matt Flynn ("definitely not better than me," he said). Russell and Flynn are in the NFL. Perrilloux is at Jacksonville State, where he transferred after failing at LSU.

I can hear you, though. This one will be different. And maybe Bryce Brown will be. You better hope so, Tennessee. Or LSU. Or Kansas State or Oregon. Or maybe Miami, though probably not. Brown did commit to Miami, but he didn't sign there. He asked Miami fans to jump, and you jumped, but that was then. This is now. So get ready to jump, Rocky Top. Or you, University of Nike-Eugene. Brown is about to speak.

Odds are he'll turn out to be a great college player, maybe even the next Greg Little. You remember Greg Little -- the best running back, according to some analysts, in the high school class of 2007. He held one news conference to announce he was down to two schools, Notre Dame and North Carolina, then held another to announce he was committing to Notre Dame ... then signed with North Carolina. Oops. And in two college seasons since then, the arrogant little twerp has run for 639 career yards.

Bryce Brown could make a much bigger mark than Greg Little, though maybe stain would be a better word. His recruiting "adviser," Brian Butler, already is being investigated by the NCAA. Some leeches are medicinal and others are not, and the NCAA is trying to figure out which species fits Butler.

Brown is a silly little kid for letting himself be used by Butler, which suggests he lacks the maturity to handle the pressure he soon will face as the most famous freshman in football. Then again, Brown should be immature. He's 17 -- a kid. He's nobody, really. But that won't stop the media from getting flights to Wichita for his news conference.

Brown will make his announcement from the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, a cheeky place for a running back who has literally gained as many yards in college as I have. He's just like Jimmy Clausen, who held his 2006 announcement news conference at the College Football Hall of Fame, because that's where he figured he'd end up some day. And maybe he will, if he can make enough money in the Arena League to buy an admission ticket.

At least Clausen ended up at Notre Dame. And surely Brown will play wherever he says he will play Monday, unlike misguided Nevada lineman Kevin Hart, who held a 2008 news conference to commit to California, even though none of the coaches at California had heard of him. Nor should Brown strive to be like five-star quarterback John Brantley of Ocala, Fla., who held a news conference in 2006 to announce he would play for Texas. Brantley went so far as to direct a reassuring statement to Texas coach Mack Brown:

"I won't let you down, Coach," he told Brown.

A few months later Brantley reported for class ... at the University of Florida.

We the media were at the Hart news conference. We were at the Brantley and Perrilloux and Clausen news conferences. We were at both of Greg Little's news conferences, the impertinent little ...

And we'll be at the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame on Monday for Bryce Brown.

But what if we didn't show up? What if that tree fell, and nobody with a microphone was around to record it? Would Bryce Brown still make a noise? I wonder. And I hope. I hope the media boycotts Brown's press conference.

It would never happen, of course ... but what if? What if we skipped it? What if we as a society -- you as sports fans, we as sports media -- showed some pride and decided that a 17-year-old could attend any college he wants, but we'll be damned if we're going to act like it's a major news event.

That's my dream.

Attending a news conference for a high school kid? That's my nightmare. In two decades in this business, I've been assigned just one of these things. It was for a Raleigh basketball recruit in 2001, the most important recruit out of North Carolina since David Thompson nearly 30 years earlier. This kid was choosing between Duke and North Carolina, and when he made his announcement, I was there. Great kid and great family, but what a Duke disappointment Shavlik Randolph turned out to be.

It's a circus, these announcements. Most of the time, I love a circus. Who doesn't? But this one, with Bryce Brown, is different. In this one, a 17-year-old kid is the ringmaster.

And we're the clowns.