Further Review: 17-Year-Old Cody Paul Is All Washed Up

Further Review is a jaunt into territory not necessarily NFL-related, so to answer your comments whether or not this is pertinent to pro football, it probably isn't. Enjoy it anyway. 

If you've already forgotten who Cody Paul is, you're forgiven.

Paul was no David After Dentist or Leeroy Jenkins, but if you saw a more impressive reel of 12-year-old tackle football than Paul's highlights from 2006, you need to send it to me.

Originally posted by his brother for some out-of-state relatives to see, the video of the young tailback became an instant hit on YouTube, amassing nearly nine million hits.

Fast forward to a new profile coming out in this month's ESPN The Magazine. Paul is now 17, and the barrage of high-profile college scholarship offers that the family might have been expecting never came.

No offer from an FBS school came at all—probably because Paul never grew out of his 5'5" frame. And while his stats are impressive (1,260 yards and 21 TDs), they seem weak against the level of competition. The family has made one last push for Cody with another video: This one highlights his senior year, which you can see below.

I can't help but find it hilarious that ESPN The Mag not only did a "Where Are They Now" piece on a kid still in high school, but put it in their perennial "NEXT" issue.

I watched this new video and I saw a short kid with decent agility and no real burst of speed burning the same three teams over and over again. This seems like the kind of depreciating asset whose life's destiny involves joining the ranks of the anonymous in FCS. But that's fine.

At some point, everybody retires from football. But the big problem for his family is that he garnered all of this notoriety for it and then couldn't cash in on it.

Sounds to me like exactly what he would have experienced in big-time college football.