The world of professional spelling garnered national attention this week, as well as controversy, when under-age spelling wunderkind Anurag Kashyap went first in the National Spelling League draft to the Anaheim Syllables. Kashyap is the youngest wordsmith to ever skip college and high school to go straight to the pros.
Pro spelling has had to face criticism from those who claim the major leagues have gone after younger and younger wordsmiths ever since the formation of the National Spelling League in 1998. Detractors claim the NSL is luring away some of America’s brightest young minds from academic careers that could help them in the non-spelling world.
Mere mortal Kashyap was selected from among 150 other stellar spellers for a lead position on California’s Anaheim Syllables, a major contender in the Eastern division of national spellers. In previous drafts, students as young as 15 have skipped completion of high school and college to enter professional league spelling, but Kashyap, a “spelling monster,” according to sports writers, will be foregoing high school and college in entirety for a 3-year $18 million contract.
“People raise hell when an athlete, or even a mathlete skip college to go pro,” said Kashyap’s coach, Oxford Associate Professor of Spelling Chip Bustero, “but these are Anurag’s prime spelling years. He’s only got another few years of language mastery before the memory starts to go. Every year he puts off going pro he not only loses that salary, but all the lucrative endorsement deals. Nike is thinking about going into notebook and paper production—Anurag’s just the kind of brainiac they’re looking for to promote those products. And we’re already in talks with Bic and Pilot. Whoever’s got the deeper pockets can lock in a deal now, before he really puts professional spelling on the map.”
However, opponents among the living argue that word jockeys like Kashyap not only lose college opportunities and training for careers outside the spelling world, but other prospects, like being a part of the 2008 Olympics spelling team. Spelling Coach to the American Olympic team Ruben Fartstarter expressed worry about the future of Olympic spelling if other star Englishologists like Kashyap lose eligibility.
“We were beginning to make real headway in the 2004 Olympiad. Then Hattie Page and Yukio Konichi both go for top dollar to the Seattle Suffixes and the Pittsburgh Homonyms, respectively. We’re losing top talent and the word nerds of tomorrow aren’t even going to college teams anymore. We were ranked third to England and Australia last time, which means we’re only beating countries that don’t speak English. Can you imagine a few under-scoring amateurs getting up on a stage in front of the whole world and misspelling ‘misspell’? We’ll look quite the fools.”
The potential scandal comes at the worst time for the new professional sport, following accusations over the last few months that some of the sport’s most notable stars have been taking spelling-enhancing drugs. The damaging allegations came in the form of a book by 19-year-old retired San Francisco Palindromes speller Anita Watt, I Before E Except After Steroids. Also in the book are damning accusations of excessive alcohol use and well-known spellers taking cocaine, even during the 2004 Olympics, including harrowing descriptions of all-night “speed-spelling” matches.