Tis summer and the living is easy.

There is no summer lull for college recruits. Just the opposite.

The summer months are full of activity for both high school athletes and the colleges that will want their talents in good time.

Football players attend camps on the campuses of schools far and wide, huge (55,000 at Ohio State)

and small (less than a 1,000 at some Division III institutions). Athletes are given scholarships at these camps — after they shown their interest and their abilities.

There are also state-held “all-star” games where a few nuggets are unearthed and given money for their up-coming college experiences.

Travel teams dot the map these days in so many sports. Volleyball, basketball, baseball and soccer teams enter tournaments — mostly on weekends — and show their wares to recruiters who are not on hiatus from workloads but do a lot of their heavy lifting in the summer.

Basketball teams are formed for AAU tournaments and even budding sophomores and juniors are on the courts. Those entering their senior year are especially displayed.

American Legion baseball teams compete with travel teams for the better players. Major League scouts are seen in abundance at multi-team tournaments, and college recruiters can fill their rosters for more than one year.

In baseball, travel teams will glean players from a fairly large geographical area and then play in tournaments all along the Eastern Seaboard from Delaware to the Carolinas. Such teams charge fees to join the caravans and the organizers of such teams let it be known in loud terms just how many of their players have been signed by major league teams or have been given scholarship money by colleges.

In basketball, the richest of the AAU teams boast of their summer schedule and outfit their players with apparel from companies such as Nike, Adidas and Puma.

Not only do the football summer camps help the athletes be seen and find scholarship money, but the coaching staffs at the schools can earn tens of thousands of dollars to augment their usual salaries. The bigger and more well-known schools take in more money than the smaller and lesser-known schools.

All-star games have proliferated in recent years . . . and in West Virginia some athletes will play in as many as three of them — football, basketball and baseball.

It seems nobody wants to fall behind the competition. The status quo is untenable anymore.

No, there is no summer lull . . . or your school or team will be left outside as the others pursue the money trail, whether it be by Interstate or goat path.