According to Bleacher Report’s Tyler Conway, Baby Gronk’s father is using the football star’s recent “flips” to get attention on social media. These “flips” are completely unofficial and have taken place throughout the past week at USC, Alabama, and Auburn. According to Conway, schools are not permitted to make official scholarship offers until a player’s junior year of high school, which is approximately six years away for Baby Gronk. Therefore, none of these commitments are legally binding.
No doubt San Miguel’s father Jake, who oversees his son’s online persona, is behind this latest publicity stunt. Jake San Miguel has a reputation for being very pushy and persistent when approaching influential people in the sports industry in an effort to secure endorsement deals and attention for his son.
While Madden San Miguel has the potential to become a real prospect in the future, he is currently only useful as a prop for his father Jake to occupy the #1 spot on the college football newswire. The joke is one that football fans hate no matter how much they try to make fun of it. Meanwhile, the youngster is getting a lot of bad press for being eleven years old and obviously uninvolved with the social media circus—or, at the very least, confused about the consequences of capitalizing on the influence of so many fans.
The pernicious effect of Baby Gronk hype on online culture. The parents’ extreme need for attention on social media is unhealthy for their children, who are just eleven years old. That’s also not too shocking.
Baby Gronks are a product of a culture that values views above all else, disregarding the well-being of individuals in one’s immediate vicinity. The most disturbing online behaviors are those displayed by children whose fathers are constantly endorsing them.
