Why College Football’s National Signing Day must go
By J.P. Scott
College Football‘s National Signing Day is one of the most painful parts of following the sport.
I love college football. Why wouldn’t I? People give me money to watch it, talk about it and write about it. I love the rivalries. I love the crowds. I love the atmosphere in the stadium on game day. I love how it starts in August and lasts through January — and even that is not long enough. I even like going to Spring football games.
But there is one aspect of the sport I absolutely can’t stand for a variety of reasons, and that is recruiting — specifically National Signing Day.
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I understand the process and how it is necessary to build teams. I understand how meaningful it is to beat out another school for a certain recruit. What I don’t understand in the infatuation surrounding the process. This process has spawned an entire industry. The internet is littered with websites full of news and message boards that have nothing to do with anything else but recruiting.
I’ll pop into these message boards and see people losing their minds about some 3-star cornerback from Little Rock giving something called a “soft-verbal” to a school. I’ll go into Facebook fan groups and see fans of different teams trash-talking based on some 17-year old kid picking one school over another. People get passionate. People get angry. People get downright crazy about the recruiting process.
And then signing day comes.
Holy cow, do I despise signing day. Not only is there no actual football going on, now we have to standby for an entire day while every website we read and talk show we listen to gives an update each and every time some kid from some place you and I have never been decides where he wants to go to college and makes it known to the public. Don’t let that kid be dubbed a 4-star or higher by any number of recruiting sites, because look out — the team he just signed with has pretty much locked down a national title sometime during that young man’s tenure. It’s pretty much science.
I’d like to find the first guy who ever decided to make a spectacle of announcing his college choice by putting three hats on a table and picking one. I’ve got a list of things I’d say to him — none of which I’m permitted to say here. He created a whole new segment of the “me” culture that we really could have done without — especially in the age of the “selfie.”
And may we offer prayers and condolences to any poor kid who initially gives one of those “soft verbals” to a school, only to change his mind — a.k.a. “flip” on or before National Signing Day. Think about all of the worst things you could ever say to any human being. Then hop on Twitter and watch as a scorned fan base says each and every one of them to a 17-year old kid just because he didn’t decide to attend a certain school — a school that most of the fans themselves likely didn’t attend.
It’s pretty disgusting.
Not only is it disgusting, it’s silly. It’s silly for anyone to think all recruits and recruiting classes are going to have the same or similar impacts. Recruiting plays a small part in the eventual success of a program, but I promise you that coaching, developing and how a player fits are much bigger parts of the process.
Take 2011 for example. All recruits from the class of 2011 will either graduate this year or be red-shirt seniors this coming season. Imagine how good Florida Gator fans felt when they beat out Alabama, Auburn and LSU to land a 5-star recruit at quarterback — a kid who was, by all accounts, the best quarterback prospect in the nation. They were already clearing a spot for another National Championship trophy in Gainsville.
That kid’s name was Jeff Driskell. He’ll be finishing his career at Louisiana Tech.
Fans of Nebraska had to be doing cartwheels the same year after landing Aaron Green, one of the top running backs in the 2011 class — also a five star recruit. Some of you recognize the name. He plays for Texas Christian now. He transferred away from Nebraska a couple of years ago when it became apparent that he was losing carries to some 3-star recruit named Ameer Abdullah.
Those are just two examples, but they go to show how silly this entire process is. It’s a complete crapshoot — the biggest of all crapshoots in sports. There are 11 guys on the field in football. Landing one superstar changes almost nothing, especially in a game where the physical changes a 17-year old kid is going to go through between now and his senior year are really what will define him as a player. It’s not the same as basketball or baseball. It’s not even the same as the NFL Draft.
In the NFL Draft, fully developed men are being selected to do a specific job. Nobody gets drafted as an “athlete.” Someone is about to invest millions in a guy and that someone is going to know everything about what he is about to invest in. College recruiting, on the other hand, seems more like casting a net in an area where you are pretty sure there are big fish and hope you haul in some nice ones.
Full disclosure — I’ve never been recruited to play a sport in college and neither have most of you (I have been hammered pretty hard by military recruiters). But I’d love to be sitting on the couch of a kid who is being recruited heavily just to listen to some of the pitches and promises being made by what essentially amount to six-figure (or more) used car salesman. I wonder how easy it is to see through the B.S. being hurled in their direction. I wonder how many parents are smart enough to know better.
I wonder how many actually care.
Apparently, I’m in the minority. A lot of people do care about recruiting and marry their emotions to the results. ESPN, Rivals, 24/7 and Hudl all cash in on it. I guess it’s one of those “get off my lawn” things I have to deal with as I get older and tend to stare at more things with my head tilted sideways like a confused dog.
I’ll be doing the same thing on National Signing Day, cocking my head to the side as I surf the web and turn my radio dial looking for some form of sports media that isn’t going to update me every time some 3-star tight end from South Carolina decides what college he is going to in the fall. But it’ll probably be Clemson.