So what have we learned from Kevin Hart? Probably nothing, but he has provided us with a teachable moment.

Hart is the young man from Nevada who joined the throng across the country in staging a news conference around national signing day to announce that he had made a tough choice between California and Oregon and decided he would play football at Cal.

Except the offensive lineman had not been recruited by Cal. Or Oregon. Or any other major college. Hart had made the whole thing up, but that didn't stop him from getting media coverage and even getting ranked by one of the recruiting services, though he apparently doesn't have big-time college football talent.

Let's forget about the issue of how someone - from family or school - should have stopped Hart before he got so far, and let's think about the atmosphere in which we hang on the words of 17-year-olds and spend months reporting on the whims that might be sending them to State U. or, heaven forbid, Out-of-State U.

Mr. Flip realizes the recruiting media genie has been out of the bottle almost as long as Barbara Eden has been out of hers (it's a very old-school sitcom reference, kids). But, still, he wishes the next kid who wants to hold a college-choice news conference in his school gym would get told no, because the third-period girls are playing volleyball and the Action News team is too busy covering a fire to send over a camera crew.